Learn more about Business Figures

We’ve made Business Figures for you. Whether you own or run a business, work in one, advise them or are just interested in how things are in New Zealand - we hope Business Figures will be a delight for you.

We talked to a lot of people to learn how they use data in their business. Did they use it to help them understand their business environment? To make great decisions? We learned that most of you don't. It's too hard and takes too long, and you have to know what data to look for.

But, when we showed people what was possible, they got excited. Very excited. The retailer selling baby clothes in Whangarei could see how many children were born in their area each year. The café owner in Nelson was fascinated by the data about tourism trends near them - the number of visitors, the languages they speak, how long they stay, and how much money they spend.

So we dreamt up Business Figures - a way for you to find relevant data simply by describing a couple of things about your business. We're adding more maps and graphs every day, so you can keep discovering new and important information. ASB came on board to sponsor the design and development of Business Figures, and Statistics NZ became our data partner, specifically helping us to build a search function that links over 16,000 commonly known business types to the official ANZSIC (Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification) categories, and produced a full industry-to-occupation dataset which, well, we love.

We, along with our wonderful, generous partners, hope you enjoy learning more about the world of business. Let us know what you think at the top of the page. We’ve only just begun, but let’s see how far we can go…