Everyone's asking how much tax influencers pay. Here's a better question: where are all the PAYE workers going?

In 2020, 3.8 million Kiwis received income through traditional employment (salary and wages taxed at source). By 2024, that number hit 4.1 million. Population growth, right? Except the data tells a more complicated story. (Source: Stats NZ (LEED), taxable-income-sources)

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of PAYE earners actually rose by just 43,000 people. Then something shifted. From 2022 to 2024, it jumped by 244,000. That's not gradual growth. That's a surge back into traditional employment after two years of barely moving.

The missing piece? What happened to everyone between 2020 and 2022. New Zealand's population didn't stop growing. So if PAYE numbers stalled while the working-age population expanded, hundreds of thousands of people were earning income somewhere else. Contracting. Side hustles. Self-employment. The gig economy that makes IRD's job so much harder.

This matters because it shows exactly why the Tax Department is now chasing influencers and content creators. The traditional employment base is shifting. In 2000, when this dataset begins, almost everyone who worked showed up in PAYE figures. Today, there's a shadow workforce earning income that doesn't flow through neat monthly salary deposits.

And here's the part nobody mentions: these are nominal figures. Inflation since 2019 has hit roughly 20 to 25 percent. So that growth from 3.8 million to 4.1 million PAYE earners? In real terms, accounting for what money actually buys, the traditional employment base has barely grown at all. It's treading water.

The 2022 to 2024 surge tells you something else. When inflation bites and interest rates climb, people flood back to stable PAYE jobs. The freedom of contracting or running your own show loses its appeal when rent and groceries become survival maths. Traditional employment becomes the safe harbour.

But that surge also reveals how many people had left in the first place. If 244,000 people could return to PAYE work in just two years, they were doing something else beforehand. Freelancing. Consulting. Building online businesses. Making money in ways that don't show up cleanly in tax data until IRD comes asking questions.

So when RNZ asks how much tax influencers pay, the answer sits in this tension. IRD built its systems for a world where almost everyone earned PAYE income. Now it's chasing a growing slice of workers who operate outside that framework. The data shows exactly how big that slice has become and how quickly people move in and out of it when economic conditions shift.

The influencer tax story isn't about a few high-profile creators. It's about 290,000 people who weren't in traditional employment in 2022 but are now. And all the others who still aren't. That's the tax base IRD is scrambling to understand.