Labour Market reports
Female Labour Market Outcomes At a Glance
Published: 11 April 2007
Description
This is the first annual report on female labour market outcomes. It focuses on changes for females in the past five years. The report will be produced annually.
Link to full report
Female Labour Market Outcomes HTML | PDF [73 KB,11 pages]
Achievements:
- Labour market disparities between women and men have decreased in the last five years.
- Female wages have been increasing faster than male wages leading to a reduction in the gender pay gap from 15.9% in June 2001 to 13.6% in June 2006.
- Disparities between women of different ethnic groups have generally declined over the last five years with participation and unemployment rates converging.
- The disparity between male and female qualification levels has been reducing over the last 20 years and is likely to continue to decrease further as young women are more highly-skilled than their male counterparts.
- New Zealand compares favourably with other OECD countries in terms of female unemployment, participation and wages.
Challenges:
Female wages remain considerably lower than male wages.
The majority of females work in semi-skilled occupations which leads to a lower overall skill level occupational profile for females than for males. In addition, there has been higher growth in semi and low-skilled jobs for females than for males.
Figure 6: Summary of the Female labour market for December 2006
Moving Forward:
In 2007 the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women celebrates its 40th anniversary. Over this time labour market outcomes have improved markedly for women. However, there are still gains to be made and policy programmes aim to continue improving female labour market outcomes in the future.
Related information
Quick facts about females in the labour market
Future updates
This is a regular report – the next update is due in early 2008. Reports from previous periods can be found in archive
Author or contact details
For further information please contact the Labour Market Analysis team