While soaring bills freeze household spending, there's one part of the economy that looks like it's thriving: wholesale trade just hit $98.4 billion in 2024. (Source: Stats NZ (LEED), earnings-by-industry)

That's up 22% since 2020. Impressive, right? Except there's a problem with that number. It's nominal. It doesn't account for inflation. And New Zealand's had roughly 20-25% inflation since 2019.

So here's the real story.

In 2020, wholesale trade stood at $80.5 billion. COVID hit. Supply chains collapsed. Then they came roaring back, and by 2022, wholesale was at $89.3 billion. A 10.9% jump in two years.

But 2022 was also when inflation really bit. Consumer prices were up 7.2% that year alone. The dollars flowing through wholesale looked bigger, but they weren't buying more stuff. They were just keeping up.

By 2023, wholesale hit $94.7 billion. Another $5.4 billion in growth. Then 2024: $98.4 billion. On paper, it's a steady climb. Four consecutive years of growth. The kind of trajectory that suggests resilience.

Strip out inflation, though, and you're looking at real growth closer to 10% over five years. Not 22%. That's about 2% a year in real terms. Barely ahead of population growth.

Here's what that means in practice: wholesale businesses are moving more dollars, but they're not necessarily moving more goods or generating more genuine economic activity. They're just dealing with higher input costs, higher wages, higher everything. Revenue goes up because prices go up.

And that connects directly to why household spending is frozen. The same inflation that inflates wholesale revenue is the reason families are cutting back. When power bills and grocery costs surge, discretionary spending vanishes. Households can't afford to buy more. Businesses can't afford to discount. Everyone's trapped in the same squeeze.

The timeline tells it clearly: 2020 was the shock. 2021-2022 was the rebound. 2023-2024 has been treading water in nominal dollars while losing ground in real terms.

Wholesale trade looks healthy on a spreadsheet. But zoom in past the headline number, and you see an economy that's grown far less than it appears. The dollars are bigger. The value isn't.