While experts warn about crumbling infrastructure and staffing shortages, New Zealand's business sector is facing its own crisis: companies are shutting down at the fastest rate in recorded history.

836,210 businesses died in 2025. That's not a typo. It's the highest number since Stats NZ started tracking business deaths in 2001, and it represents a collapse that's been building momentum for three years straight. (Source: Stats NZ, business-births-deaths)

Here's the trajectory that should terrify anyone watching the economy: 2021 saw 725,370 closures. Then 2022 dropped to 597,615. the low point that now looks like a brief reprieve. By 2023, deaths climbed to 705,996. In 2024: 779,969. Now 2025: 836,210.

That's a 40% jump from 2023 to 2025. In just two years, an additional 130,214 businesses closed their doors. The average year-on-year increase over the past three years? 55,120 additional deaths per year.

Put another way: if you owned a business in 2023 that survived that year, you were part of a group that's now 130,000 smaller. The failure rate isn't just rising. It's accelerating.

The contrast with 2022 is particularly striking. That year, just 597,615 businesses died. 238,595 fewer than 2025. Whatever conditions existed in 2022 that kept businesses afloat, they've evaporated completely. The OCR held steady this week, as reported by RNZ, which might be good news for mortgage holders. But for businesses already on the edge, holding rates high for longer means the bleeding continues.

This isn't about creative destruction or market efficiency. This is 836,210 stories of someone who took a risk, hired people, signed a lease, bought stock, and then had to make the call to shut it down. Some went bust. Some walked away before they lost everything. Some just gave up.

The 24-year dataset shows we've never been here before. Not during the GFC. Not during COVID's initial shock. The 2021 spike to 725,370 looked like pandemic fallout. But three years later, we're 110,840 deaths higher than that.

Every one of these closures ripples outward: job losses, commercial property vacancies, unpaid invoices, suppliers without customers, landlords without tenants. The infrastructure expert warning about future wastewater failures is right to be concerned about capacity and expertise. But while we debate pipes and treatment plants, the business ecosystem that funds local councils through rates is shrinking at record speed.

836,210 businesses died last year. That's 2,290 every single day. And the trend line points one direction: up.