Prior to 2015, the employment numbers were calculated as full-time equivalents rather than a count of individuals.
Definitions
The NZDF Regular Force is made up of full-time members of the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Regular Force of the New Zealand Army, and the Regular Air Force collectively.
NZDF Reserves are part time members of the military who, in addition to their civilian employment, have a parallel career in the NZ Defence Force as a member of the Navy, Army or Air Force.
Civilians are employed by NZDF in roles that do not require deployment in an operational environment. Civilian numbers include Veterans' Affairs New Zealand and locally employed civilians overseas.
Attrition rate: the number of terminations in the previous 12 months divided by the average staff of the previous 12 months. It excludes Reserves.
Changes to data collection/processing
For the civilian counts, FTE (full-time equivalents) is used up to and including the Year ended June 2014. From the year 2015 onwards reporting, it changed to a headcount measure. Regular and Reserves are consistently reported as headcount.