Statistics New Zealand produces a number of income and wage measures that are useful for different purposes.
To help you decide which wage or income measure to use, see the flowchart under 'Available files' in the User guide for wage and income measures.
For more details see the User guide for Statistics New Zealand's wage and income measures (PDF, 27 pages, 160kb).
Person or household level measures
New Zealand Income Survey
Provides information about the income of individuals and households, including wages and salaries, self-employment, government transfers, and investment income. The New Zealand Income Survey's large sample size allows the data to be analysed by age, sex, ethnicity, region, highest qualification, industry, and occupation.
- New Zealand Income Survey consultation
Statistics NZ is changing the New Zealand Income Survey (NZIS). We plan to keep collecting information on wages and salaries, self-employment, and government transfers, but to stop collecting information on other transfers and investments. This means income from all sources would no longer be available. To help us make decisions about the NZIS content, we need to know what NZIS data you use. Feedback is invited until 29 May 2013.
Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (LEED): annual person-level release
Statistics based on taxable earnings and includes sources of income, income transitions, income spells, job tenure, counts of people employed and self-employment.
Household Economic Survey
Information about the incomes and expenditure pattern of private households throughout New Zealand. Find out about the sources of income and amount of income households receive.
Survey of Family Income and Employment
Information about respondents’ work, family and household circumstances, income and net worth. As SoFIE is a longitudinal survey, it is able to look at the changes in family, and household income and the factors of changes.
Census
The Census is the official count of how many people and dwellings there are in New Zealand. It takes a snapshot of the people in New Zealand and the places where we live. Data relating to income is for usual residents of New Zealand aged 15 years and over and is collected via two questions on the individual form. Sources of income data relates to how an individual got income in the 12 months ending on Census day. Total personal income relates to the total income an individual received from those income sources in the 12 months ending 31 March following Census day. The individual data for income sources and total income is also aggregated for all members of a family and for all members of a household to provide income data at family and household levels as well.
Job-level measures
Quarterly Employment Survey
Information about New Zealand’s official employment. Find out about average hourly earnings, average paid hours in a week, or average weekly earnings.
Labour Cost Index
Information about movements in base salary and ordinary time wage rates and overtime wage rates. Find our about indicators of wages and percentage changes, both at adjusted and unadjusted level.
Linked Employer-Employee Dataset (LEED): quarterly job-level release
Provides information on the dynamics of New Zealand's labour market. Statistics are based on salary and wage earners and includes filled jobs, job flows, worker flows, mean, median, and total earnings.
Reports and articles
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