In 2020, 10,350 workers aged 55-59 suffered fatal or serious injuries on the job. Four years later, that number sits at 4,734. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

That's a 54% drop. And it's not just a blip: the decline has been consistent year after year. 2021: 10,281. 2022: 4,929. 2023: 4,908. 2024: 4,734.

Here's the part that doesn't make sense: this happened while New Zealand's workforce got older. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of people in this age bracket grew substantially. Baby boomers are working longer, retirement ages are creeping up, and employers are actively recruiting older workers to fill labour shortages.

More people in a high-risk age group should mean more injuries, not fewer. Older workers face higher risks: slower reflexes, reduced physical resilience, longer recovery times. Yet the numbers moved in the opposite direction.

So what changed? The most likely explanation sits in how work itself has transformed since 2020. COVID forced thousands of older workers out of physically demanding roles and into desk jobs, remote work, or early retirement. Construction sites, factories, and warehouses, where serious injuries cluster, all saw their workforces reshaped.

The shift wasn't about making dangerous jobs safer. It was about moving people out of dangerous jobs entirely. The injury rate didn't fall because scaffolding got sturdier or forklifts got smarter. It fell because fewer 55-59 year olds are climbing scaffolding or driving forklifts.

This is good news with a caveat. If you're 58 and working, you're statistically safer than you've been in two decades. But if you're 58 and looking for work, the data suggests your options have narrowed. The jobs that remain accessible to older workers skew toward lower-risk, often lower-paid, roles.

The 2024 figure, 4,734 serious injuries, is still 4,734 people who went to work and didn't come home whole. Each one represents a life disrupted, a family affected, an income lost. But in the context of what this number used to be, it also represents thousands of injuries that didn't happen.

Whether that's because work got safer, or because older workers got pushed toward safer work, depends on which side of the employment desk you're sitting on.