Here's a question that should make you curious: What happened between 2020 and 2024 that made New Zealand workplaces dramatically safer for young people?

The numbers are stark. In 2020, 39,297 workers under 30 suffered serious injuries at work. By 2024, that figure had plummeted to 15,957. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

That's a 59% drop in just four years. To put it in human terms: 23,340 fewer young Kiwis went home from work with injuries serious enough to require ACC claims. That's the equivalent of every single student at the University of Auckland avoiding a workplace injury.

This isn't a gradual trend. For two decades, serious injuries among under-30s hovered between 30,000 and 45,000 annually. In 2019, the figure was 42,393. In 2020, it peaked at 39,297. Then something changed.

The drop started in 2021, but it accelerated sharply in 2022, when injuries fell to 17,055. By 2023, they'd dropped further to 16,425. The 2024 figure of 15,957 marks the lowest point in the entire 24-year dataset.

What's driving this? The data doesn't tell us directly, but the timeline suggests several factors. COVID-19 disrupted work patterns starting in 2020. Lockdowns kept people home. Industries with high injury rates, particularly hospitality and retail where young workers are concentrated, saw reduced hours or closures.

But the injury rate kept falling even as the economy reopened. That suggests something more fundamental shifted. Perhaps better safety training became standard. Perhaps labour shortages gave young workers more bargaining power to refuse unsafe conditions. Perhaps ACC's injury prevention programmes finally gained traction.

Or perhaps, less optimistically, young people simply aren't working in the same numbers or the same industries. If fewer under-30s are taking physically demanding jobs, that would reduce injuries without improving safety conditions themselves.

What we know for certain: a generation of young New Zealanders is experiencing workplace safety their parents never had. In 2000, when today's 25-year-olds were born, 36,648 workers their age were seriously injured. Today, that number has dropped by more than half, despite population growth.

Whatever combination of factors created this change, it's working. The challenge now is understanding it well enough to protect it, and to extend the same safety improvements to older workers who haven't seen equivalent drops.

Because every one of those 15,957 injuries in 2024 still represents someone's daughter, son, partner, or friend going to work and coming home hurt. The number should be celebrated for how far it's fallen. But it should also remind us how far there is still to go.