A few weeks ago, when the annual regional GDP data were released, I used them as the basis for a post casting some doubt on whether we were seeing the widely-touted economic gains from the large and rapidly growing population in Auckland.
The data aren’t ideal by any means. Among the other issues, they are only nominal, they only go back to 2000, and there are no regional hours worked data. But they are what we have. Since 2000, Auckland’s population – already far and away the largest in New Zealand – had grown rapidly, up 30 per cent, while the population in the rest of the country had increased by 13 per cent.
And yet, allowing for all the limitations of the data, GDP growth per capita in Auckland over that period had been among the lowest in any of the regional council areas in New Zealand. Average GDP per…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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