New Zealanders aged 15 years and over spend, on average, more time in unpaid work than they do in paid employment. Yet, despite its potential contribution to the productive activity of the New Zealand economy, unpaid work is excluded from conventional economic statistics, such as the national accounts and employment measures. The potential significance of unpaid work to productive activity has been recognised by the authors of the System of National Accounts 1993, where it is recommended that a satellite account be produced that extends the core national accounts by measuring the value of household production. Measuring Unpaid Work in New Zealand 1999 values a key component of a household satellite account, namely, the labour component of unpaid work.
Estimates in this report are based on information from the recently released Time Use Survey, which collected data on how New Zealanders spend their time. Survey information on the number of hours per week spent on unpaid productive household activities has been combined with a median housekeeper wage rate to derive the unpaid work values. This report details those estimates and the methodology used to derive them.
Published 25 May 2001
Measuring Unpaid Work in New Zealand (1999) (2.9 MB) (PDF)
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