A Dunedin construction worker breaks his ankle on site. A Wellington office manager develops carpal tunnel from years at a keyboard. A Tauranga teenager tears her ACL playing netball. What they have in common: all three ended up on ACC last year.

They weren't alone. 1.1 million New Zealanders received accident compensation in 2024, according to tax data from Stats NZ. That's more than one in every four workers in the country (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources).

The scale is staggering when you zoom out. In 2020, 882,000 Kiwis were on ACC. Four years later, that number jumped to 1.1 million. An extra 227,000 people joined the rolls. That's roughly the entire population of the Waikato added to ACC in less than half a decade.

This isn't about minor scrapes. ACC only pays out when an injury stops you working or requires treatment beyond a GP visit. Every one of those 1.1 million people represents a life interrupted: income reduced, plans delayed, someone else picking up slack at home or at work.

The trajectory tells its own story. The numbers climbed steadily through the pandemic years, when you'd expect them to drop with fewer people in risky workplaces. They kept climbing through 2022 and 2023. By 2024, ACC payouts had become 26% more common than in 2020.

Some of this growth is demographic. New Zealand's workforce has expanded. But not by 26% in four years. The data suggests something else: either more people are getting injured, or more injuries are serious enough to need compensation, or both.

The figure also reveals how precarious working life has become for many Kiwis. One in four workers means the person sitting next to you at your desk, or working alongside you on the factory floor, will likely need ACC at some point this year. It's no longer an edge case. It's routine.

And here's the thing those million-plus people share: none of them planned for it. The ankle breaks on a Tuesday. The back gives out lifting something you've lifted a hundred times before. The accident happens, and suddenly you're navigating paperwork, reduced income, and the slow grind of recovery.

The growth from 2000 to 2024 is even starker. Back then, 545,000 Kiwis received ACC. The number has doubled in a generation. That's not just population growth. That's a fundamental shift in how many New Zealanders experience injury serious enough to need compensation each year.

When more than a million people need ACC in a single year, it stops being about individual accidents. It becomes a portrait of a country where getting hurt, and having your life disrupted by it, is now one of the most common experiences workers share.