Business confidence might be stuck in the doldrums but the number of individual enterprises in New Zealand continues to grow, according to new data from StatsNZ.

As of February 2022, New Zealand had 592,700 enterprises, an increase of 5 per cent from February 2021.

This followed a 0.7 per cent increase in the year to February 2021, StatsNZ said.

Despite the challenge of the Covid-19 pandemic the total number of businesses has risen 10 per cent since 2018.

The number of paid employees in these enterprises was 2.4 million, up 3.4 per cent from February 2021, StatsNZ said.

The construction industry led the growth. It had 77,160 enterprises and 206,600 employees, an increase of 8.9 and 7.9 per cent respectively from February 2021.

The healthcare and social assistance industry continued to be the largest employer, with 274,300 employees at February 2022, a 4.2 per cent increase from February 2021.

Professional, scientific, and technical services had 5000 (7.7 per cent) more enterprises and 15,000 (8.7 per cent) more employees at February 2022 than a year ago.

Retail trade had 29,440 enterprises and 230,100 employees, an increase of 4.9 per cent from the previous year for both counts.

Not all sectors saw growth.

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Agriculture, forestry, and fishing had 118,200 employees, a decrease of 4 per cent from February 2021.

Arts and recreation services had 37,600 employees, down 1.7 per cent from February 2021.

The accommodation and food services industry had another drop of 600 employees in the year to February 2022, following a drop of 12,000 employees in the year to 2021.

However, this reflects the impact of closed borders on tourism in the past two years.

The StatsNZ data counts "economically significant enterprises" that produce goods and services in New Zealand - these range from large corporate organisations to owner-operator firms.

At February 2022, there were 2670 "large enterprises" (those with 100 or more employees), up 3.5 per cent from February 2021.

These enterprises had 1,142,300 employees, up 4.2 per cent from February 2021 – more than the 3.4 per cent increase for all enterprises.

At February 2022, 72 per cent of enterprises in New Zealand had no (paid) employees in them.

The Auckland region accounted for 35 per cent of all business locations and employees in the country (compared to 32 of all business locations and 33 per cent of all employees, 10 years ago).