New Zealand Business Demography Statistics: At February 2015
In February 2015, the number of businesses in New Zealand passed the half million mark for the first time, Statistics New Zealand said today.
New Zealand had 502,000 businesses in February 2015, up almost 2 percent on 2014, and 14 percent more than a decade ago in 2005. The number of paid employees passed 2 million, up 2.3 percent from 2014.
The construction industry continued to lead the increase, with 3.7 percent more businesses and 6.4 percent more employees in 2015 than in the previous year.
“The increase in the construction industry was mainly due to residential building,” Business Register manager Stuart Pitts said. “There were 22,000 employees working in the residential building industry in February 2015, an increase of 11 percent and in line with continued GDP growth in this sector since 2013.”
All regions except for the West Coast had more business locations in 2015 than in 2014. The largest increases were in Auckland and Canterbury, at 2.9 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.
For the fourth year in a row, the number of new businesses was greater than the number that closed. Non-employing businesses accounted for 86 percent of all start-ups and 92 percent of closures at February 2015.
“Of all the businesses that started up in 2005, 27 percent were still operating in 2015,” Mr Pitts said.
“This 10-year survival rate varied across industries, with 36 percent of financial and insurance services businesses carrying on into their 10th year, compared with only 18 percent of information media and telecommunications businesses.”