Labour Market Statistics: March 2023 quarter

Period-specific information Response Rates Survey Reference period Response rate Sample rate HLFS Each week during the quarter (1 January 2023 – 31 March 2023) Target: 90 percent Achieved: 78.5 percent Target: 76 percent Achieved: 70.8 percent QES The pay week ending on, or before, 20 February 2023 Target: See note Achieved: 90.8 percent N/A LCI Pay rates at 15 February 2023 Target: 94 percent Achieved: 87.6 percent N/A Note: due to changes in how response rates for Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) are being reported, there is currently no comparable target. A table of comparable response rates for the QES is presented towards the end of this page. See Household Labour Force Survey sources and methods: 2016 for more information on the sample rate and response rates. Cyclone impacts In late January and mid-February 2023, Aotearoa New Zealand was affected by torrential rain and tropical cyclone Gabrielle. The adverse weather and resulting flooding caused significant damage and disrupted our usual collection activities across the North Island. Despite the disruption to usual collection operations, we remain confident that all official national labour market measures remain fit for purpose this quarter. Please see Cyclone and flooding effects on labour market statistics in the March 2023 quarter for more information on how the HLFS, QES, and LCI were affected. HLFS Coverage rates Usually, the undercoverage rate in the HLFS is around 20 percent. The overall undercoverage rate for the HLFS in the March 2023 quarter was 19.6 percent. This compares with 20.2 in the December 2022 quarter and 19.8 percent in the March 2022 quarter. Data quality We remain confident that HLFS data remains fit for purpose for New Zealand’s official labour market measures in the March 2023 quarter. In particular, the use of regional working-age benchmarks improves estimate quality at a national and regional level, and we are confident that this has maintained data quality overall. However, regional benchmarks cannot account for strong collection shifts within these areas. In particular, Gisborne-Hawke’s Bay had disproportionately poorer collection in the most affected areas for the March 2023 quarter, creating the appearance of sub-regional working-age population shifts toward areas with higher response rates. We do not recommend the use of sub-regional data, and low-level regional industry and ethnicity breakdowns for the affected areas. Outliers During the seasonal adjustment process, X-13-ARIMA-SEATS can give less weight to the irregular component. Specifically, if the estimated irregular component at a point in time is sufficiently large compared with the standard deviation of the irregular component as a whole, then the irregular component at that point can be downweighted or removed completely and re-estimated. We refer to such observations as partial- and zero-outliers, respectively. In practice, the downweighting of outliers does little to seasonally adjusted data, but the impact of the outliers on the trend series will generally be reduced. However, if an outlier ceases to be an outlier as more data becomes available, then significant revisions to the trend series become possible. Outliers Quarters Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in the labour force Female not in the labour force Jun 2022 Z .. .. .. Z .. Sep 2022 .. P P .. .. Z Dec 2022 .. .. .. P P .. Mar 2023 .. .. .. .. .. .. Key: .. – no adjustment P – partial weight Z – zero weight Revisions to HLFS Each quarter, we apply the seasonal adjustment process to the latest quarter and all previous quarters. Every estimate is subject to revision each quarter as new data is added, which means that seasonally adjusted estimates for previous quarters may change slightly. In practice, estimates more than two years from the end-point will change little. This table lists the changes in estimates between the current and previous quarters for the seasonally adjusted data. Percent revision from last estimate, seasonally adjusted Quarter Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in labour force Female not in labour force Mar 2022 0.02 -0.05 -0.09 -0.18 -0.04 0.10 Jun 2022 -0.01 -0.02 0.06 0.06 0.00 0.02 Sep 2022 -0.01 0.01 0.00 0.25 0.02 0.00 Dec 2022 0.00 0.07 0.07 -0.08 0.02 -0.12 This table presents revisions for the trend estimates. Trend revisions are generally larger than those of the seasonally adjusted data. Percent revision from last estimate, trend Quarter Male employed Female employed Male unemployed Female unemployed Male not in labour force Female not in labour force Mar 2022 0.02 -0.01 -0.05 -0.15 -0.02 0.10 Jun 2022 0.02 -0.04 0.09 -0.13 -0.02 0.02 Sep 2022 0.01 -0.05 0.20 0.66 -0.01 -0.01 Dec 2022 -0.01 0.18 0.19 2.40 0.18 -0.30 The table below shows the average of all such absolute revisions, expressed relatively, and indicates to what extent the current estimates might be revised when the revised data for the next quarter becomes available. Mean absolute percent revisions Seasonally adjusted Trend 1-step 4-step 1-step 4-step Male employed 0.05 0.09 0.20 0.21 Female employed 0.06 0.10 0.26 0.28 Male unemployed 0.54 0.90 2.21 2.29 Female unemployed 0.52 0.96 2.13 2.31 Male not in labour force 0.10 0.17 0.41 0.40 Female not in labour force 0.10 0.15 0.39 0.42 QES Response rate The total response rate for the Quarterly Employment Survey in the March 2023 quarter was 90.8 percent. The reference period was the pay week ending on, or before, 20 February 2023. QES response rates using different measurements The above response rate is calculated as a percentage of firms in the sample that we received usable data for. This response rate includes full coverage data for approximately 2,400 Ministry of Education schools which are gathered through an administrative source. Excluding these units, the response rate would be 85.5 percent. Prior to the December 2022 quarter, we had reported the QES response rate as percent of non-key firm’s weighted RME (rolling mean employment). Rolling mean employment is an estimate of a firm’s average employee count, which is then weighted up to represent a portion of similar sized firms in the economy. Key firms (the largest, most economically significant firms) were excluded as the aim is to collect all the key firms in the quarter. With this method we would have reported an 87.1 percent response rate in the March 2023 quarter. This method provides an estimate of the achieved coverage of the survey but does not provide strictly the number of firms that responded to the survey. This method excludes key-firms and any administrative data we sourced. Below is a table of achieved QES response rates using the different measurements. Quarter Total response rate Response rate excluding administrative school data Non-key firm weighted RME response rate March 2023 90.8% 85.5% 87.1% December 2022 88.3% 81.4% 84.1% September 2022 90.9% 85.6% 88.3% June 2022 92.2% 87.8% 89.1% March 2022 92.5% 88.1% 90.1% December 2021 89.4% 83.1% 89.5% September 2021 92.5% 88.1% 90.5% June 2021 92.3% 87.7% 92.0% March 2021 90.9% 85.4% 87.3% Sample rotation in QES In the March 2023 quarter, we introduced a change to the QES sample design known as a sample rotation. The purpose of the change is to gradually replace some of the sampled long-term respondents in the QES. The rotation is being implemented over the next two years, except for December quarters, with selected industries being rotated each quarter. For the March 2023 quarter, we included the following industries in our sample rotation: Transport, postal and warehousing Education and training Healthcare and social assistance. Due to the sample rotation, the sampling error on quarterly movements for these industries is higher than previous quarters. As this is the first sample rotation that Stats NZ has conducted on the QES, we are investigating the impact the rotation has had on our sampling error calculations. Movements in key variables in these three industries need to be considered alongside the accompanying sampling error information. LCI The LCI measures changes in salary and wage rates for a fixed quantity and quality of labour. LCI data is collected by postal and electronic surveys. For the March 2023 quarter, respondents were asked to report pay rates on the reference date of 15 February 2023. The response rate was 87.6 percent, finishing below the target response rate of 94 percent. The response rate for key firms was 94.6 percent, below the target of 100 percent. Labour cost index – DataInfo+ has more information about LCI methodology. Quarter Response rate Target March 2023 87.6 94 December 2022 86.3 94 September 2022 87.4 94 June 2022 93.4 94 March 2022 91.3 94 December 2021 92.1 94 September 2021 91.4 94 June 2021 96.3 94 March 2021 95.6 94 December 2020 95.8 94 September 2020 94.1 94 June 2020 95.2 94 March 2020 95.0 94 December 2019 95.1 94 September 2019 94.8 94 June 2019 95.3 94 March 2019 95.0 94 December 2018 94.8 94 September 2018 95.2 94 June 2018 95.2 94 March 2018 95.4 94 General information and methodology For general information and methodology on the specific surveys within the labour market statistics release, please see the following Datainfo+ pages: Household Labour Force Survey Labour Cost Index Quarterly Employment Survey en-NZ