Wellington Approved a Controversial High-Rise While Worker Income Flatlined for Two Years
The capital just green-lit a major development as taxable income data shows Wellington workers earned virtually the same in 2024 as 2023. After inflation, they're going backwards while the city builds upward.
Key Figures
Wellington just approved a controversial high-rise development that promises to reshape the city's skyline. But here's the number nobody's discussing: the people who'll live and work around it earned effectively the same last year as the year before.
Wellington's total taxable income hit $3.87 billion in 2024. In 2023, it was $3.87 billion. The difference? Less than $1 million across the entire region. That's a 0.02% increase. Rounding error territory.
Strip out inflation and Wellington workers are poorer than they were two years ago. With prices rising roughly 4-5% annually over this period, that flat nominal income means real purchasing power dropped around 8-10% since 2022. (Source: Stats NZ (LEED), taxable-income-sources)
The contrast is stark. Wellington's built environment is being transformed. Cranes dot the skyline. Development applications spark heated council debates. But the economic engine powering all of it has stalled.
Go back five years and the picture gets worse. Wellington's taxable income in 2019 was $3.43 billion. By 2024, it reached $3.87 billion. That's a 13% nominal increase. Sounds decent until you remember inflation over that period ran at 20-25%. In real terms, Wellington's workforce is earning less than they did before COVID.
This isn't about a single bad year. From 2020 to 2022, Wellington's taxable income climbed steadily: $3.70 billion, then $3.72 billion, then $3.79 billion. Progress, even if modest. But since hitting $3.87 billion in 2023, growth stopped cold.
The capital's economic stagnation creates an uncomfortable question: who exactly are these new developments being built for? If worker incomes are treading water and falling behind inflation, where's the purchasing power to fill premium apartments and office spaces?
Other regions tell different stories. Some saw income growth outpace Wellington. Some fell further behind. But Wellington's particular flavour of stagnation, coming precisely as the city debates its development future, matters because the capital sets policy for the entire country.
The Reserve Bank held the OCR steady this week, keeping mortgage rates elevated. For Wellington workers watching their real incomes shrink while their city builds upward, that's another year of standing still while costs rise around them.
These figures are nominal, unadjusted for inflation. That matters because it means every dollar of that $3.87 billion buys less than it did in 2023, and substantially less than in 2019. Wellington isn't just stagnating. It's sliding backwards while building skyward.
This story was generated by AI from publicly available government data. Verify figures from the original source before citing.