A substantial part of New Zealand’s economic growth in the fi rst half of the last decade refl ected high rates of growth in labour utilisation. However, the average hours worked per capita has fallen by around 3 percent since 2005. New Zealand’s labour utilisation rate was higher than four of the fi ve OECD countries that we have chosen to benchmark New Zealand against (the ‘comparator’ countries2 ) in 2008, refl ecting a combination of high participation rates, low unemployment, and a high average number of hours worked relative to other OECD countries. It will be.
