Overview
This report provides a statistical overview of New Zealand firms. It has a specific focus on the country's small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), examining their significance for the economy, their financial performance, the dynamics of SMEs and the significance of SMEs internationally.
The intention of the report is to improve the understanding of enterprise structure and dynamics in New Zealand. The statistics themselves record aspects of the aggregate economic activity of New Zealand enterprises. Hence there are limits to what can be concluded from the data because they cannot explain why enterprises change (or do not change) over time. However, the data can complement other research into how the qualitative features of New Zealand firms relate to their structure, behaviour and performance. For example, the management practices, governance arrangements and growth aspirations of SMEs are generally considered qualitatively different to larger firms.1 The drivers of change, or indeed stability, are the issues of key interest. This report collects and reports the outcomes of those drivers.
This year's Structure & Dynamics introduces the data on aspects of firms' performance and business practices that are now available from Statistics New Zealand's Business Operations Survey. These data complement the structural statistics in the report by providing an overview of the extent to which New Zealand firms engage in key business practices and how this varies by firm size and industry sector.
This is the eighth such report produced by the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) and Statistics New Zealand.
Business Demographics at February 2006
- 96% of enterprises employed 19 or fewer people.
- 87% of enterprises employed 5 or fewer people.
- 64% of enterprises had no employees.
- The number of SMEs increased 4% in the year to 2006.
- SMEs accounted for 30% of all employees.
- Firms with 5 or fewer employees accounted for 11% of all employees.
- From 2001 to 2006, SMEs accounted for 59% of all new net jobs in the economy.
- There were 11,751 net new entries into the Business Demography dataset at February 2006.
- Self-employed people accounted for 11% of people in the labour force (at March 2007).
Business Performance in the Year ending March 2005
- SMEs accounted for 39% of the economy's total output (deflated value added).
- Firms with 5 or fewer employees had the highest average real profits per employee and increased their total real profits by six percent from 2004 to 2005.
- Average real salaries and wages per employee tended to increase with firm size.
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