KEY POINTS:
Minimum wage earners tend to be single, female, under 25 and working in hospitality or the retail sector.
Department of Labour senior researcher Jason Timmins presented a snapshot of the minimum-wage workforce yesterday at the Population Association of NZ conference in Wellington.
His presentation questioned the perception that Maori are over-represented among minimum-wage earners. An ethnic theme around minimum earners showed itself only in the 25-to-64 bracket, where most had completed studying.
Pacific Islanders made up 10.4 per cent of minimum-wage earners in this bracket, more than twice the 5.1 per cent of Islanders who make up the whole working population.
For the same bracket, Maori make up 11.8 per cent of minimum-wage earners, compared with 9.9 per cent of the working population.
"It's interesting to see the ethnic story doesn't really appear until you look at the 25-to-64 age group, and that story doesn't seem to be Maori," Mr Timmins said.
The proportion of the population earning the minimum wage had jumped considerably following Government policies that had lifted the rate from $8 an hour in 2002 to $11.25 this year.
But Mr Timmins said the minimum-age workforce continued to share similar traits:
* About half of them were working in the hospitality or retail sector in sales or service positions.
* Those under 25 tended to be female, single, studying and working part-time.
* The disproportionate number of females increases for those over 25, to almost three in four minimum wage earners.
