Literacy and Life Skills for Māori Adults: Results from the Adult Literacy and Life Skills (ALL) Survey

3. Labour force status

This section discusses the distribution of skills by labour force status amongst Māori adults.

Figure 3.1 shows the distribution of the employed, homemakers and other labour force statuses among Māori adults measured by the ALL survey. Figures 3.2 to 3.5 show the distributions of each of prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy and problem solving skill by labour force for Māori adults in New Zealand. In addition, Figures 3.2 and 3.3 show the comparable statistics available from the IALS survey.

Overall Figures 3.1 to 3.6 indicate that:

• There was an increase in the proportion of Māori adults who were employed⁶ reflecting the overall tightening of the labour market over this period.
• For all four skill domains (prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy, and problem solving skill), employed Māori adults in 2006 had substantially higher skills than Māori adults not working. This pattern applies generally for the whole New Zealand adult population.
• For all four skill domains, for both the employed and those not working, more than half (from 60 percent to 86 percent) of Māori adults in 2006 had level 1 or 2 skills.

Figure 3.1:  Distribution of labour force status, IALS and ALL

Figure 3.2:  Prose literacy level by labour force status, IALS and ALL

Note:

1. The IALS statistics for Homemaker were of too poor quality to report.

Figure 3.4:  Numeracy level by labour force status, ALL only

Figure 3.5:  Problem-solving level by labour force status, ALL only

Note:

1. The statistics for Homemaker and Other were of too poor quality to report.