/ / Section Three: Qualifications, occupations, and remuneration

Section Three: Qualifications, occupations, and remuneration

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Te Taunaki Disability Deep Dive

17 August 2023

Qualifications

Almost half (45.6%) of disabled public servants in Te Taunaki had Bachelor’s Degree / Level 7 qualifications or above, compared to 63.2% of non-disabled public servants.

Table 6: Proportion of disabled/non-disabled public servants by qualifications

	Disabled	Non-Disabled
No Qualifications	4.4%	1.9%
High School/Secondary School Qualification	21.8%	15.2%
Level 1 to 4 Certificate	15.2%	9.9%
Level 5 or 6 Diploma	12.9%	9.8%
Bachelor’s Degree or Level 7 Qualification	24.3%	28.3%
Bachelor Honours Degree or Postgraduate Certificate/Diploma	11.1%	16.5%
Master’s Degree	9.0%	15.9%
PhD/Doctoral Degree	1.2%	2.5%

Occupations and customer-facing roles

When it came to occupations, the highest proportions of disabled public servants in Te Taunaki were Social, Health, and Education Workers (21.0%), Inspectors and Regulatory Officers (16.2%), or Information Professionals (13.8%). When compared to non-disabled public servants, disabled workers were more likely to be Contact Centre Workers (11.7% vs 6.9%) or Social, Health, and Education Workers (21.0% vs 15.4%), and less likely to be Managers (9.0% vs 14.5%) or Policy Analysts (4.9% vs 7.6%).

Table 7: Proportion of disabled/non-disabled public servants by occupations

Occupation Group	Disabled	Non-Disabled
Managers	9.0%	14.5%
Policy Analyst	4.9%	7.6%
Information Professionals	13.8%	15.1%
Legal, HR and Finance Professionals	5.3%	6.5%
ICT Professionals and Technicians	2.9%	2.8%
Social, Health and Education Workers	21.0%	15.4%
Other Professionals not elsewhere included	3.0%	4.1%
Inspectors and Regulatory Officers	16.2%	14.7%
Clerical and Administrative Workers	10.3%	10.6%
Contact Centre Workers	11.7%	6.9%
Other Occupations	1.8%	1.8%

Just over half (50.9%) of the disabled public workforce were in customer-facing positions, greater than the proportion for non-disabled public servants (39.9%).

Leadership roles

In terms of representation through leadership, only leaders in non-managerial positions as a group had a representative proportion of disabled people. Disabled people were underrepresented across all levels of management; 2.9% of senior leaders (tiers 1 to 3), 3.1% of tier 4, and 4.3% of tier 5 (or another type of manager or team leader) were disabled, all lower proportions than in the Public Service overall (5.5%).

Table 8: Proportion of leadership levels by disabled/non-disabled

	Disabled	Non-Disabled
T1-3 leaders	2.9%	97.1%
T4 leaders	3.1%	96.9%
T5 leaders or another type of manager or team leader	4.3%	95.7%
Leaders in non-managerial positions	5.5%	94.5%
All other staff - non-leader	5.9%	94.1%

Remuneration

In general, disabled public servants were overrepresented in the lower salary bands in Te Taunaki and their average full-time equivalent annual salary was $79,600 compared to $90,500 for non-disabled public servants.[1] Labour market statistics from Stats NZ provides evidence that disabled people in the wider labour market also tend to have lower earnings than non-disabled people.

As shown previously, the occupations that disabled public servants are more likely to work in tend to be lower paying and disabled public servants were also more likely to have lower-level qualifications, and these factors are likely contributing to the differences in average salaries.

Table 9: Proportion of disabled/non-disabled public servants by salary bands

Salary Range	Proportion		Cumulative proportion[2]
	Disabled	Non-Disabled	Disabled	Non-Disabled
Less than $40,000	0.4%	0.8%	0.4%	0.8%
$40,000 - $44,999	0.7%	0.7%	1.2%	1.5%
$45,000 - $49,999	4.8%	3.5%	6.0%	5.0%
$50,000 - $54,999	10.0%	6.9%	16.0%	11.9%
$55,000 - $59,999	10.4%	7.6%	26.4%	19.4%
$60,000 - $64,999	12.3%	9.2%	38.7%	28.7%
$65,000 - $69,999	11.1%	8.0%	49.8%	36.6%
$70,000 - $74,999	8.7%	7.5%	58.5%	44.1%
$75,000 - $79,999	6.3%	6.2%	64.8%	50.3%
$80,000 - $84,999	4.8%	5.3%	69.6%	55.6%
$85,000 - $89,999	4.5%	4.6%	74.1%	60.2%
$90,000 - $94,999	3.6%	4.4%	77.8%	64.6%
$95,000 - $99,999	3.0%	4.3%	80.8%	68.9%

$100,000 - $109,999	6.6%	8.4%	87.4%	77.3%
$110,000 - $119,999	3.6%	5.6%	91.0%	82.9%
$120,000 - $129,999	1.9%	4.6%	92.9%	87.5%
$130,000 - $139,999	2.3%	3.1%	95.1%	90.6%
$140,000 - $149,999	1.3%	2.4%	96.4%	93.0%
$150,000 - $199,999	2.8%	4.9%	99.2%	97.9%
$200,000 or more	0.8%	2.1%	100.0%	100.0%

Note: pay bands over $100,000 in this figure are presented in larger increments as there are fewer people overall in this range. This is shown in the figure above with a divider between those bands below $100,000 and those above.

[1] We have used a Stats NZ methodology to estimate average salaries from the detailed salary bands, using salary band midpoints as the basis of the estimation. However, using this particular methodology with Te Taunaki data alone overestimates average salaries and the size of discrepancies between groups, compared to results from our administrative Workforce Data collection. For this reason, we used the actual salary distribution sourced from the Workforce Data, which has high quality salary information for all public servants, to improve the accuracy of some of the Te Taunaki midpoints. This has increased the accuracy of the Te Taunaki salary estimates, although they still tend to be higher than comparable results from the Workforce Data.

[2] Cumulative proportions in this instance show the proportion of people at each band who earn at that band AND at all lower bands, as opposed to the proportion, which only shows the proportion of people who earn at that band. For example, 3.0% of disabled public servants earn in the $95,000 - $99,999 band compared to 4.3% of non-disabled public servants. However, looking at the cumulative proportions for that same band, just over 80% of disabled public servants earn $99,999 or under, compared to 68.9% of non-disabled public servants