Updated: 8 February 2010

The pilot Sector Tool is an interactive labour market analysis tool which allows you to select and view key labour market indicators by industry.  These indicators allow users to develop a comprehensive picture of the selected industries in terms of the workers in the industries, the firms involved in the industries, the performance of the industry in the wider economy, and the vulnerability of the industry's workforce to swift change. Click here to access the tool directly [XLS, 6.1MB].

Troubleshooting for the Sector Tool Pilot

As an MS Excel application, the pilot 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, or by choosing View/Zoom from the menu. Note that this is still a Pilot tool so if you have any technical problems or questions about interpretation, please email us.  We welcome your feedback.

Why was it developed?

The Labour Market Analysis team is in the process of developing a suite of interactive spreadsheet tools that, taken in their entirety, will provide a comprehensive view of many aspects of the labour market.  The Sector Tool Pilot presents data from a wide range of sources in order to help inform users in making policy decisions from a sector perspective. Other DoL Tools consider aspects of the labour market from an occupational, regional or Iwi perspective.

Who is it for?

The data in the Sector Tool Pilot provides a broad view of labour market indicators at the industry level, but is not the most detailed data available, so we do not recommend it for people with an academic or research background. However, we use the tool internally for many analysis tasks. Data and policy analysts elsewhere in the public sector may also find it useful, as may those in the private sector, including industry federations, industry training bodies, and labour unions.

What it contains

The pilot tool provides access to a wide range of measures, in five broad categories:

• Workers
  • Employment by age
  • Employment by sex
  • Employment by ethnicity
  • Employment by qualifications
  • Employment by course completions
  • Employment by job tenure length
  • Employment by skills
  • Employment by occupation
  • Quarterly employment by earnings
• Firms
  • Employment by firm size
  • Firm count by firm size
  • Self-employed workers
  • Employment by firm births and deaths
  • Firm count by firm births and deaths
  • Worker turnover rate
  • Employment share in firms that started up in 2003 and went on to fail within 5 years.
• Economy
  • Employment growth and employment forecasts
  • Employment by region
  • GDP growth and GDP forecasts
  • Export trade
  • Hours worked
  • Direct & indirect labour requirements
  • Direct & indirect skilled labour requirements
  • Labour productivity
• Industry Ranking - This allows users to rank all 2-digit industries according to employment share by the following measures:
  • Young workers (18-24 yrs)
  • Older workers (55+ yrs)
  • Maori & Pacific workers
  • Workers with no qualifications
  • Self-employed workers
  • Workers without postschool qualifications
  • Study completion rates
  • Workers who have been employed in the industry for more than 3 years
• Workforce Vulnerability - Users are also able to see a ranking of industries according to how vulnerable their workforces are to long-term unemployment in the event they are laid off.  The following factors were taken into account when calculating the workforce vulnerability rankings:
  • Young workers (18-24 yrs)
  • Older workers (55+ yrs)
  • Maori & Pacific workers
  • Workers with no qualifications
  • Self-employed workers
  • Workers without postschool qualifications
  • Study completion rates
  • Workers who have been employed in the industry for more than 3 years

How to use it

The pilot tool has 7 sheets.  Users should start on the Main Page (the "Menu" tab).  Click the red button to get to the "Start Here" arrow.  Follow the numbers from 1 to 5 to select an industry (or industries) and view summary charts about the chosen industry.

Main Page

1. Level of Detail: Choose a level of detail for your industry.  The 1-digit level is the highest but may include many firms and workers that you want to exclude.  For more detail, you can go to 3-digit industries.  E.g. if you want to look at Poultry Farming (ANZSIC96 code A014), you will need to go to the 3-digit level.
2. Industry Code Finder: If you don't know the ANZSIC code for the industry you want to examine, you can use the Industry Code Finder.  Simply search the drop-down menu for the industry that best fits your desired industry to retrieve the correct ANZSIC code. Note that the Industry Code Finder doesn't interact with the rest of the tool.  Once you find the correct code, you will need to manually enter it into the Industry Chooser (below).
3. Industry Chooser: Once you've chosen your level of detail, you can choose specific industries for display.  Use the drop-down menus: at the 1-digit and 2-digit level, you may choose only one industry; at the 3-digit level, you may choose up to six unique industries.  Do not choose duplicates.  The tool will alert you if you make an invalid choice: follow the directions on the screen to make a valid choice.
4. Selection Confirmation: If you've chosen the 3-digit level of detail, you will be prompted to type in a meaningful name for your industry in the green box here.  Otherwise, the name will be chosen for you.  Confirm that your choices are correct.
5. Summary Charts: Click on the link to view summary charts of your chosen industry.  The Summary Chart section contains direct links to specific sections elsewhere in the tool.  As with other locations in the Pilot tool, you may select and copy charts, tables, and text for insertion into Word documents.

The Workers, Firms, and The Economy sheets

These three sheets function in the same way.  Once you have made your industry selection on the main page, you may click on the Workers, Firms, or The Economy buttons at the top of the main page to go straight to the respective sections. You may navigate to specific variables within sections using the links in the left sidebars.  You may navigate to other sections using the links at the top of each section.

The Workforce Vulnerability sheet (not interactive)

Here we have ranked 48 industries at the 2-digit level according to workforce vulnerability risk—the relative risk that workers in the industries are of long-term unemployment should they lose their jobs. 

Workforce vulnerability is expressed as a relative ratio to all industries, which is indexed at 1.  Thus, workers in the 2-digit Forestry and Logging industry are 1.4 times more at risk of long-term unemployment in the event they laid off than workers across all industries; Insurance workers are at only 0.7 times the average risk.

See the sheet for more details.

The Industry Ranking sheet

Here you may see how 48 industries at the 2-digit level compare in terms of employment of different variables (see above for full list).  Choose a variable from the green drop-down menu. 

Updates

Following the completion of the Pilot stage, future versions of the Sector Tool are intended to be as up-to-date as possible. They will be a showcase for the Department of Labour's quarterly Employment Estimates, which are calculated following each release of the Household Labour Force Survey. 

In addition to the Department's Employment Estimates, the following data sets are used in the tool:

• National Accounts data
• Census of Population and Dwellings
• Household Labour Force Survey
• Student course completions
• Employment Outlook
• Linked Employer-Employee Data (LEED)
• Business Demography

When new data are available, updated versions of the tool will be uploaded to the website.  This will ensure that the web page always provides the most up-to-date version.

Caveats

This early version of the Sector Tool is a Pilot and therefore not quite up to date, with a full release to come out once the data can be updated.

The employment estimates in the tool are valid up to the June 2009 only, owing to data issues contingent upon the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS).  In September 2009, the HLFS moved from using ANZSIC 96 classifications for its data to the more comprehensive ANZSIC 06 classifications.  As the employment estimates used in the Sector Tool are benchmarked to HLFS data, this has meant that the employment estimates are valid only until the last quarter of ANZSIC 96 data from the HLFS: the June 2009 quarter.

Furthermore, the tool only includes Business Demography data up to 2008.  Data for 2009 are now available, and will be incorporated with the next update of the tool.

Call for Feedback

The Labour Market Analysis team has decided to release the Sector Tool as a Pilot, even though some of the data is not yet up-to-date, in order to elicit feedback from potential users and prepare for a final version that meets the needs of its target group.

If you want to give us feedback on any aspect of the Sector Tool, please feel free to email us at: LabourMarketAnalysis@dol.govt.nz.