The second Te Matapaeroa report finds almost 40% of Māori-owned businesses have a wāhine Māori as owners and they are also more diverse, with 61% having at least one female owner (of any ethnicity), compared to 53% of non-Māori-owned businesses.

On average, Māori comprised 43% of the workforce of Māori-owned businesses with wāhine Māori owners. In contrast Māori represented 38% of the workforce of Māori-owned businesses without wāhine Māori and 14% of the workforce of non-Māori owned businesses.

The research shows the contribution of Māori to the wider economy and will inform future policy work to build the Māori economy and help whānau thrive.

Te Matapaeroa 2020 has identified 23,300 economically significant Māori-owned businesses, representing 8.8% of all businesses that we have ownership data for, for the year ending March 2020.

This compares with about 10,200 Māori-owned businesses in the earlier Te Matapaeroa 2019 report.  The difference is due to using a more complete dataset and a change to the definition of a Māori-owned business, from a 51% to a 50% threshold.

The report found 38,200 Māori sole traders (Māori individuals earning self-employment income), representing 14.7% of all sole traders. Researchers noted 10,100 significant employers of Māori (5.6% of all businesses with employment data) where at least 75% of kaimahi were Māori. About a third of significant employers of Māori were Māori-owned.

Between 2010 and 2020, the total indicative margin (total revenue from sales minus purchases and expenses, not including salaries and wages) for all Māori-owned businesses almost doubled from $3.7 billion to $7.3 billion, while the total indicative margin for all non-Māori owned businesses increased by 75% over the same period.

In 2010, the average indicative margin for Māori-owned businesses was nearly two-thirds (63%) of non-Māori-owned businesses, while 10 years later it had grown to 75%.

The report uses data from the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) and the Integrated Data infrastructure (IDI) covering the tax year 2019/20 which became available in October 2021. The report has analysed data back to 2010.

The largest number of significant employers of Māori was in Tāmaki Makaurau, while Gisborne had the highest proportion of significant employers of Māori (27% of all businesses were significant employers of Māori), followed by Northland (16%) and Bay of Plenty (12%).

Similar rates of Māori-owned and non-Māori-owned businesses received the COVID-19 wage subsidy (33% vs 32%), as did Māori and non-Māori sole traders (32% vs 36%). But the large difference at which significant employers of Māori and not-significant employers of Māori received the wage subsidy (60% vs 75%) could not be explained, warranting further investigation. 

Te Puni Kōkiri is developing the tools to be the authoritative voice on Māori wellbeing data, insights and information, with the vision of that mahi being Thriving Whānau whose overall purpose is to address inequities.

You can read the report here.