it figures

The numbers behind the noise
🇳🇿 NZ 🇬🇧 UK
Economy

88,644 More Kiwis Got a Wage Last Year. That's a Record Workforce.

The most recent tax data shows 2,810,745 people earned wages or salaries in 2024, the highest ever recorded. Two shocks knocked this number backwards this century, and the recovery times tell you exactly how different 2008 and 2020 really were.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ
2,810,745 Wage and salary earners, 2024
88,644 Increase in one year
5 years GFC recovery time
Crime & Justice

375 More People on Remand for Sexual Assault in a Single Year

Arrests make the news. What happens next sits in a Stats NZ table almost nobody reads. Sexual assault remand numbers just jumped 57% in one year to a 27-year high, and not one of those people has been convicted of anything yet.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Safety

39 Serious Injuries a Day: New Zealand Hasn't Had a Safer Year Since 2008

Serious non-fatal injuries have risen every single year since 2008, reaching 14,283 in 2024. But the climb has almost stalled since 2019, and that flattening is the most hopeful number in 24 years of data.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ / ACC
Economy

Retail Pay Now Supports a Record 254,724 Kiwis. The GFC Cost Nine Years

More New Zealanders rely on retail earnings as their main income than at any point since 2000. But the recovery from the global financial crisis took nine years, and retail has never grown as fast since.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Crime & Justice

Courts Withdrew 42,311 Charges Last Year, the Most Since 2010

Withdrawn charges have climbed for four straight years and are now 40% above their 2021 level. But the latest jump was the smallest of the run, which is the part worth watching.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Crime & Justice

Youth Courts Handed Out 873 Money Orders in 1997. Last Year: 36.

Monetary, confiscation and disqualification orders in the Youth Court have fallen 96% from their 1997 peak. Two numbers from the same dataset show something bigger than a policy tweak: an entire way of dealing with young offenders has quietly disappeared.

29 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Economy

Big Families Are Disappearing: Three-Plus-Kid Households Hit a 28-Year Low

When schools ask parents to keep sick kids home, the households with the most children absorb the most disruption. There are fewer of them than at any point since 1998: 74,900 couples raising three or more dependent children, down from 92,300 in 2019.

28 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Crime & Justice

Courts Are Sentencing a Quarter as Many Fraudsters as They Did in 1999

Australia's regulator says AI could make home loan fraud easier, and hundreds of millions may already be at risk. Meanwhile, New Zealand's own fraud sentencing numbers have quietly fallen to their lowest level in 27 years of records. Here's what that gap actually tells you.

28 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Economy

Fewer Kiwis Get a Student Allowance Now Than at Any Point Since 2000

In 2012, 117,339 people earned income from a student allowance. By 2024 that had fallen to 55,389, the lowest in the 24 years Stats NZ has tracked it. Half the support, in the space of a dozen years.

26 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Cost of Living

Six Surveys, Sixteen Years, One Number: 100.0 Every Single Time

Stats NZ's household expenditure series has recorded exactly 100.0 in every survey round since 2007. Here's why a number that never moves is still telling you something important about how we measure the cost of living.

26 August 2026 · Stats NZ
Crime & Justice

Bay of Plenty Courts Now Convict Half as Many People as 2009

Court reporting fills the news feed, from a fatal strangling sentence to the Gulf Harbour manslaughter case. But in the Bay of Plenty, adult convictions have fallen to 3,282, the lowest in 41 years and down 53% from the 2009 peak.

26 August 2026 · Ministry of Justice
Crime & Justice

Drug Remand Fell 29% in Two Years. Then It Rose 52% in Three.

The crime stories in the headlines this week are violent ones. But the fastest-moving number in the remand data is illicit drugs, now at 1,575 people awaiting trial, a record high in 27 years of figures.

25 August 2026 · Stats NZ