Maori account for 15% of New Zealanders and that share is growing as Maori are younger and have higher birthrates.
Westpac industry economist David Norman says Maori are well-represented in primary, manufacturing and construction, with little representation in higher-end service sector jobs.
Maori would provide a much larger share of the workforce in the future, which meant a huge opportunity existed to increase qualifications levels, prepare Maori for the jobs of the future in higher-end services and boost individual and collective financial outcomes, he said in his latest Industry Insight.
The Waikato-Bay of Plenty area has the largest Maori population.
One-quarter of all people identifying as Maori lived there, he said.
A further quarter lived in Auckland, although that was largely because of the size of the population overall.
Maori were only about 11% of Auckland’s population.
One in six Maori lived in the lower North Island, excluding Wellington.
The Maori population was far younger than the New Zealand population overall, Mr Norman said.
As a result, the percentage of under-15s who were Maori in each of New Zealand’s regions was much higher than the share of Maori overall.
In Gisborne, which had the highest concentration of Maori at nearly 50% of all residents, 65% of under-15s were Maori.
Even in Otago, where just 7.4% of all residents were Maori, 14% of under-15s were Maori.
When the composition of the Maori population by age group compared with all New Zealanders was considered, the differences were clear, he said.
Just 21% of New Zealand’s population was aged under 15 at the 2013 census but 34% of Maori were under 15.
At the other end of the spectrum, 14% of all New Zealanders were 65 or older compared to just 5.3% of Maori.
That was in part due to poorer health outcomes for Maori, meaning shorter life-spans, but was also the mathematical result of a rapidly growing population with lots of young people.
Statistics New Zealand’s middle-of-the-road population projections estimated the share of the population identifying as Maori would rise to 19.5% by 2038 give the younger age profile of Maori and higher birth rates.
"This means in years to come, Maori will provide a far larger share of the working age population, and the Maori share of the overall population is expected to rise sharply. This presents a huge opportunity, as well as challenges."
Maori would play a more active role in the workforce with the earning potential that offered.
But, as a nation, New Zealand would need to ensure training was provided for the jobs of the future, which would increasingly be in service industries.
Party because of the mix of industries in which Maori workers were employed, Mr Norman said personal incomes for those workers were lower than for New Zealanders as a whole.
Most notable, the proportion of working-age Maori on very low incomes (below $5000 a year) was higher than for all new Zealanders.
The proportion on incomes above $50,000 was lower.A further factor resulting in low personal incomes was the higher unemployment rate among Maori.
In recent years, the Maori unemployment rate had averaged about double the national average.
As at June 2016, the unemployment rate for Maori was 11% compared to 4.9% for all New Zealanders in seasonally adjusted figures, he said.
Much of the widening gap between Maori and New Zealand rates overall came directly from the fallout of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
The GFC primarily hit industries in which Maori were over-represented — manufacturing, fishing, construction and tourism.
As a result, unemployment rates rose faster than for other New Zealanders.
Since the economy returned to a more even keel, unemployment rates had come down, he said.
From a four-quarter average peak of 6.4%, overall unemployment rates had dipped to about 5.2%.
For Maori, the rate had fallen from 13.8% to 11.4%, rates far higher than the lows of about 8% among Maori seen before the GFC hit, Mr Norman said.
