10 December 2024 – We would like to thank the hundreds of businesses taking part in the development of the new Tara-ā-Umanga Business Expectations Survey.
The survey is currently in its experimental stages, with regular publication expected to start by mid-2025.
The new widespread survey includes hundreds of businesses from different sectors around the country, from small to large firms.
The new business survey is separate from the existing Survey of Expectations that includes expert forecasters, economists, and industry leaders (Table M14, 1987 – onwards), which will continue.
Business Expectations Survey, Pilot 3:
We continued our development of Tara-ā-Umanga Business Expectations Survey with a third pilot survey in October 2024. A public consultation on the survey was undertaken during March 2024 and earlier pilots conducted during April and July 2024.
Tara-ā-Umanga Business Expectations Survey: Development update following third pilot outlines the lessons we learnt from the latest testing and resulting survey design improvements.
The achieved sample size was 383 respondent businesses in pilot 3 (up from 251 in pilot 2 and 68 in pilot 1).
We report response rates by business size and industry; and explore response patterns for businesses who have completed the survey multiple times.
For the first time we present weighted estimates of population mean expectations. We explain the proposed methodology which uses sample design and employment size weights.
Please note that the pilot survey results are based on experimental data.
Continuation of parallel testing before full survey implementation during 2025
We plan to run a fourth pilot in January 2025. This will allow us to continue to build the sample size towards our target of over 400 businesses (required for reliable aggregate expectations and an understanding of key industries and demographics). As well as creating longer parallel time-series (to compare with the existing Survey of Expectations), finalise weighting methodology, and build our systems and web tables.
We anticipate regular publication will commence by mid-2025.
Background information
Inflation expectations are important because households and businesses reflect their expectations in their price- and wage-setting decisions. Improving the quality of our survey estimates of inflation expectations is part of the wider response to our 2022 review of monetary policy that identified several areas where better data could support high quality monetary policy decision-making.
For further information please see Tara-ā-Umanga Business Expectations Survey: Survey design and development: https://govt.us20.list-manage.com/track/click?u=bd316aa7ee4f5679c56377819&id=0bb194d93c&e=f3c68946f8
