Kiwi workers are more active than Australians but are being urged to do more than take the stairs in the battle with the bulge.
New Zealanders out-stepped their counterparts across the ditch across all professions surveyed by weight management company Jenny Craig, including retail, hospitality, nursing, teaching and hairdressing.
The research saw 130 people, mostly from Auckland and New South Wales, fitted with a pedometer to record the number of steps they took each working day.
Kiwis wore them during working hours across five days and Australians for one full day. The results were averaged into an hourly rate for each profession.
Retailers here were found to be more than twice as energetic as those in Australia, clocking up 1317 steps an hour compared to 611.