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.
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.
875,001 People Now Draw a Pension. In 2000 It Was Under Half a Million.
Stats NZ's taxable income data tracks 24 years of New Zealand superannuation recipients. Three quarters of all the growth has happened since 2011, and the year with the single biggest jump was 2020.
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.
Youth Court Adult Sentences Hit a 14-Year High. They're Still Down 72% Since 1997.
Three crime stories led the news this week, and the youth justice numbers just spiked to their highest level since 2011. But zoom out and the same dataset shows something worth holding onto: we're still handing down a fraction of the adult sentences we did in the 1990s.
New Zealand Just Signed 176,229 New Tenancies. Nobody Stays Put Anymore
Bond lodgements hit their highest level since 2011 last year, jumping nearly 15,000 in twelve months. That's the biggest one-year rise since 1996, and it says something uncomfortable about how fast New Zealand neighbourhoods now turn over.
33,530 Tenders Show What Government Wants to Buy. Never What It Bought.
RNZ says failing new mothers costs New Zealand $2 billion. The government's tender portal lists 33,530 contract notices, filterable every which way. What it can't tell you: what was actually bought, what it cost, or whether it worked.
Your Pay Rose More in Five Years Than in the Century's First Twelve
Median earnings jumped $14,420 between 2019 and 2024, beating the total gain from 2000 to 2012. So why does everyone feel skint? The gap between those two numbers is the whole story of the last five years.
More Than One Under-Five a Day: Child Injuries Hit a 19-Year High
While the government moves to protect under-16s from social media, the hard injury numbers for the youngest Kiwis have quietly climbed to their worst level since 2002. Three straight years above 380 serious or fatal injuries to children aged 0-4.
One Year, Two Records: Homicide Remand Went From Near-Low to All-Time High
In 2024, the number of people held on remand for homicide and related offences was the lowest in eight years. In 2025 it hit 222, the highest in 27 years of records. Those two numbers sit twelve months apart, and that's the story.
New Zealand Just Passed 4 Million Taxpayers for the First Time
RNZ has been writing about pensioners' growing tax bill. Behind that story sits a number nobody marked: in 2024 the count of New Zealanders with a taxable income source hit 4,091,334, the biggest single-year jump in 24 years of records.
The Work Injury That Tripled Since 2013 While Nobody Was Watching
When a Christchurch business evacuated over an unidentified substance this week, that's the workplace danger we picture. But the fastest-growing injury in the data arrives silently, over months, and claims for it just hit a 15-year high.