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Workforce dataset (size and demographics) 
Source: Stats NZ Integrated Data Infrastructure
16,476 individuals worked in Nursery, Turf and Gardening industries across 2021, with 39% of these being either employers or self-employed. Two-thirds (65%) of the people working in Nursery, Turf and Gardening in 2021 worked in the Gardening Services industry, 18% worked in Outdoor Nursery Production, 10% worked in Under Cover Nursery Production and 7% worked in Floriculture.
Since 2020, there has been an upward trend in the monthly count of employees within the Gardening Services industry. Employee counts vary with the seasons for Floriculture Production and Under Cover Nursery Production. Floriculture tends to have more employees between November and February, while Under Cover Nursery Production has an employee peak around December.
Nursery, Turf and Gardening covers a range of industries and workforces, which have different age, ethnic, region and gender profiles. On average, the workforce is older than the national average (national benchmark), particularly in Floriculture Production.
While the percentage of female workers aligns with female representation across Muka Tangata industries, there's notable variation across Nursery, Turf and Gardening industries, with the majority of workers in Floriculture and Nursery Production being female. Auckland and Canterbury are key regions across all Nursery, Turf and Gardening industries.
In this section we only show data against the industry codes used by Stats NZ that have been allocated to Muka Tangata. Sports Turf does not have an industry code. If you are looking for information relevant to the Sports Turf industry please see our section on Greenkeepers. Note those employed in ‘Turf Growing’ (A011300), do not reflect the numbers who are employed in the ‘Sports Turf’ workforce.