Benchmarking the HB economy

Our Regional Economic Development Agency (REDA) has commissioned an up-to-date profile of our regional economy, which has just been released.

The profile covers a wide range of metrics – the size and growth of various sectors, employment and job structure, productivity and incomes, social well-being measures, demographic breakdown and so forth, in most cases putting HB’s key numbers in a comparative all-NZ context as well.

A very useful piece of work, completed by Infometrics, that provides a set of baseline or benchmarks against which to evaluate trends and needed changes, as well as getting all the region’s planners, politicians and pundits on the same page as they analyse and advocate.

Here are some key facts about our region’s economic profile.

• Starting with people. HB has had impressive population growth – average 1.4% over the five years to 2023, a bit above the national average.

• Our population composition presents challenges that will intensify – our working age population, which drives the engine, is comparatively low (61%), given that we have a disproportionate number of people under age 15 (20%) and age 65 or older (19%). Māori represent 29% of HB’s population.

• HB’s economy underperformed in the 2006-2018 window compared to all-NZ, but then averaged 3.1% growth over the five years to 2023.

• Hastings and Napier districts generate nearly 90% of the region’s economic output; 31% of that output is exported (compared to 22% nationally).

• However, our GDP output per capita, $55,848, lags the NZ average of $72,329. HB’s five largest industries have significantly lower productivity than in the national economy. The most extreme is agriculture, forestry and fishing. GDP per worker is 17% lower than the NZ average. The average earnings per filled job is 10% lower than the NZ average. And average household earnings are 9% lower than the NZ average.

• Māori average earnings are $59,200 compared to $67,100 overall. Meat processing is the region’s largest employer of Māori.

• The largest contributor to growth has been professional, scientific and technical services which grew 5.8%pa, more than double the rate of growth of the regional economy (2.6%pa). Health care and social assistance was the second largest contributor.

The number are the numbers. They are well analysed in the report and serve to point up the array of challenges for the HB economy to grow … and to grow in an equitable manner. But as valuable as it is, this is purely an economic report, it does not address the broader social and environmental considerations with which growth aspirations must co-exist. 

You can download the Infometrics report here, and this table provides an excellent summary of the data.