Statistics New Zealand
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| Agency overview | |
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| Formed | 1956 |
| Jurisdiction | New Zealand |
| Headquarters | Statistics House, The Blvd, Harbour Quays, Wellington WELLINGTON 6140 |
| Employees | 930 (2015) |
| Annual budget |
Vote Statistics Total budget for 2016/17  $150,616,000 |
| Minister responsible |
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| Agency executive |
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| Website | www |
Statistics New Zealand (Māori: Tatauranga Aotearoa) is the public service department of New Zealand charged with collecting and producing information of a statistical nature.
Statistics New Zealand employs people with a variety of skills, including statisticians, mathematicians, computer science specialists, accountants, economists, demographers, sociologists, geographers, social psychologists, and marketers.
There are seven organisational subgroups each managed by a Deputy Government Statistician:
Many of the agency's powers, duties, and responsibilities are governed by acts of the New Zealand Parliament. The agency is a state sector organisation of New Zealand operating under the authority of the Statistics Act 1975.
The department conducts the census every five years. The census is officially done on one day. The most recent census was on 5 March 2013. The count of usual residents (excluding visitors from overseas) on this day was 4,242,048; they lived in 1,570,695 occupied dwellings; their median age was 38 years (half older, half younger); 598,605 identified themselves as "Maori" (14.9% of the population); people had a median income of $28,500. This is a main source of information, and data collected from this census is often used for further purposes within the department as well as serving as benchmark information for numerous reports and surveys. For example, the census asks about the main means of travel to work, but by combining this with data from transport surveys, the department can issue detailed reports such as "Commuting Patterns in New Zealand: 1996-2006", with specific inferences such as "Over half of people who walked or jogged to work lived within 2km of their workplace." This information is helpful for business purposes, government decision making, media purposes, foreign policy, journalism, public information, planning, and for many other uses. For example, the Federal Reserve Bank of New Zealand uses statistics from this agency about prices and wages to help develop economic indicators, exchange rate information, and the official cash rate.
The department supplies a wide variety of information. It reports on labour costs, incomes, civil unions and marriages, employment, electronic card transactions, food prices, retail trade, births and deaths, prices of capital goods, overseas trade, screen industry, international visitor arrivals, overseas merchandise, agriculture and fish stocks, water resources, building consents, electronic card transactions, English language providers, wholesale trade, local authority information, balance of payments data, manufacturing surveys, commuting patterns, mapping trends, culture and identity statistics, housing trends, work stoppages, gross domestic product, industrial energy use, and the list goes on and on. In addition, it analyzes trends and publishes forecasts. The agency does not involve itself with political polling generally.
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