Stats NZ survey highlights the New Zealand businesses hardest hit by COVID-19 restrictions

Stats NZ has today released their survey which shows that New Zealand businesses running sports competitions, concerts, weddings, and other big events were among the hardest hit by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020.

In their release, Stats NZ state that the “arts and recreation services, faced limits on crowd sizes and social distancing because of COVID, forcing the cancellation of large gatherings.

“Almost all businesses in these fields were unable to operate fully during alert levels 3 and 4, and only a small number were partly operational.”

Stats NZ Business Statistics Manager, Geraldine Duoba advised “similarly, businesses running hotels, motels, and other accommodation, as well as restaurants, bars, cafes, and other food service providers, struggled with the COVID-19 shutdown and related impacts on tourism.

Of firms across all industries, only one in five remained fully operational during alert level 4. In general, businesses with more employees were more likely to remain fully operational during all alert levels in 2020.

Many businesses changed the way they ran their operations to adapt to the impacts of COVID-19.

Duoba added “Almost one in five businesses reduced the range of goods and services they offered.”

Businesses introduced other changes during the COVID-19 lockdown.

• Almost half of all businesses increased or introduced online communication.

• Four out of five businesses made changes to the physical environment to meet social distancing requirements.

• Over half of all businesses supported their staff to work remotely.

• Almost one-quarter of businesses increased or adopted online selling of goods and services.

Stats NZ is New Zealand's official data agency. They collect information from people and organisations through censuses and surveys,This business operations survey reports on businesses with six or more employees.

Businesses were surveyed from August to December 2020 about how they responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. For graphs and tabled information go to Stats NZ