Updated: 20 November 2009

The Regional Industry Tool is an interactive labour market analysis tool which allows you to select and view key facts about selected regions or industry in terms of the number of employees. Various measures are presented in the tool to analyse features of a regional labour market and industry presence across regions.  Click here to access the tool directly [XLS, 6MB].

Troubleshooting for the Regional Industry Tool

As an MS Excel application, the tool has been developed for a fixed display setting (1280 by 1024 pixels) which may not offer the best view for all users. If the graphs do not fit onto your screen, adjust your zoom level by holding down the Ctrl Key and use the mouse scroll to resize the window. Note that this is still a ‘trial tool’ so if you have any technical problems or questions about interpretation, please email us.

Why was it developed?

The Regional Industry Tool has evolved from the Industry Regional Snapshot Tool and was developed to help users to interactively view the number of employees at a regional and/or industry level, identifying key features, similarities and differences within and across regional labour markets.

The Regional Industry Trends tool was previously available separately but is now added into the current tool as a Trends option. This option was developed to help analysts evaluate trends in detailed industries for any given region. This tool will help analysts to determine the prospects in an industry compared with other regions, or with that industry at a national level.

What it contains

The Regional Industry Tool ranks, sorts and displays the number of employees (using a 1-5 digit ANZSIC06 classification) for a selected region (or combination thereof) and/or for a selected industry. The number of employees is defined as the head count of salary and wage earners (NOT self employed) sourced from Business Demography data. Various measures are shown for each of these variables, such as:

1. Latest absolute value in region or industry (2009).
2. Change in region or industry for the period 2005-2009.
3. Change in comparison region 2005-2009.
4. Share in region or industry for the latest year (2009).
5. Share of number of employees of a regional industry in the national industry (e.g. Paper and Pulp Manufacturing in the Rotorua as a percentage of aggregate Paper and Pulp Manufacturing in New Zealand).
6. Share of number of employees in an industry across regions in 2009.
7. Relative Importance measure, a ratio which shows the degree to which an industry is over- or under-represented in a region compared to the country as a whole, in terms of the number of employees employed (also known as Location Quotient and explained further below under “Other features”).

The Regional Industry Trends menu offers trends for the number of employees in a given industry. These are presented in table and graph format and can be compared with those of other region(s) and with the country as a whole.

How to use it

The tool has 5 menu sheets that display:

1. the number of employees for 17 1-digit industries in a selected region.
2. the number of employees for 97 2-3-digit industries in a selected region. As Agriculture plays an important role in a large number of small regions, 3 digit industries are reported for Agriculture and 2 digit industries for non-Agriculture.
3. the number of employees for a selected 4, 3, 2 or 1 digit industry across Territorial Local Authorities (TLAs).
4. the number of employees for a selected 4, 3, 2 or 1 digit industry across Regional District Councils (RDCs ).
5. trends in the number of employees employed in a selected industry in a region, a set of regions, the larger RDC in which the main region fits, and for the country as a whole.

The Regions menus (1 - 2) allow you to make the following selections:

• Select region: The menu allows the user to combine up to 5 TLA and/or RDC regions. To avoid double counting a TA region or its larger RDC region, a warning and protection mechanism is built in.
• Select comparison region: any selected region or combination of regions can be compared to one single other region as well as the country as a whole.
• Select ranking measure: for each region or combination of regions chosen, one of three ranking measures can be selected for display on a graph:
  • number of employees in an industry.
  • growth in the number of employees in an industry.
  • relative importance of an industry in a region (see above for discussion).

The Industry by TLA and Industry by RDC menus (3 – 4) tabs use a similar approach as menus 1 and 2 above. The main difference is that the shares of number of employees of an industry are calculated across regions and compared with the share of number of employees for all industries across regions. Thus, for example, 8.2% of workers employed in “C224 Other Sheet Metal Product Manufacturing” are based in Invercargill City, compared to 1.4% of workers in all industries in New Zealand. In other words, the industry employs 6.0 times as many workers in Invercargill City as it does on average across the country; this means for example that the TLA is especially exposed to job layoffs in the industry.

The Industry Trends Menu (5) is an interactive tool allowing you to select and view trends of any selected industry in a region over the last 5 years, and to compare this with the same industry in other regions.

You can make your selection based on several different drop-down menus, as follows:

• Select industry: Industries can be selected at three different levels of detail; using the 1, 2 & 3, or 4 digit Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC06) level (sorted by ANZSIC06 codes). At the broadest (1 digit) level, one of 17 industries can be chosen. At the most detailed (4 digit) level, there are several hundred to choose from. The large number of ANZSIC06 codes may be confusing at first, so to help users locate the correct code for any particular job or industry, there is an interactive “Industry Finder” menu below the graph. Once you know the right code, you can search for it in the main drop-down menu to create a graph of the industry or occupation.
• Select main region: Regions can be selected at the level of TLA or larger RDC groupings.
• Select comparison region(s): The industry trends in the relevant region can be compared with a set of up to 4 regions and their aggregate. If you choose a region more than once, you won’t be able to get a graph to display properly. The tool will warn you that you’ve “double counted” a region.
• The results of your selections are shown in two ways;
• A table showing the number of employees over the last 5 years (2004-2008), compound annual average growth rates and the region’s share in the number of employees for the last year.
• A chart showing trends for the industry in the selected region over the past five years and in the relevant RC and the whole of New Zealand. To make data for different regions more comparable, these trends are indexed against 2004 data.

Updates

This information relies primarily on annual Business Demography data from Statistics New Zealand, and will be updated every year toward the end of the calendar year.

Other Features

• Graph information in menus 1 – 4: the industries can be ranked in a graph according to a selected measure with additional information in brackets of the labels. For example, if growth is selected, share is shown in brackets beside the labels and if absolute value (share in region) is selected, growth rates are shown in brackets beside the labels.
• Table-based information: each 1-3 digit industry can be ranked according to a selected measure with other information shown in relevant columns.
• Relative Importance is a ratio showing the share of employment in an industry in a region compared to its share at the national level (known in economic literature as the Location Quotient). A value higher than 1 implies relatively high employment in this industry in a region compared to the national level employment in this industry. This suggests the industry may have a comparative advantage in that particular region, assuming there are no special factors (such as government subsidies) involved.

Data Sources

If you want more detail on how the numbers were derived and sourced, see the Notes & Data Sources tab on the spreadsheet.