In 2000, New Zealand paid out $11.3 billion in wages and salaries. It would take 15 years to double that figure.

Then something changed.

By 2024, the wage bill had doubled again, reaching $22.5 billion. But this time it took just nine years. The last four years alone saw an increase of $1.5 billion (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources).

The numbers reveal three distinct chapters in New Zealand's economic story. From 2000 to 2008, wages grew steadily but slowly, climbing from $11.3 billion to $15.8 billion. The Global Financial Crisis barely dented that trajectory. By 2009, the wage bill was $16.3 billion, and it kept climbing through the 2010s at roughly $500 million a year.

Then came COVID. In 2020, the wage bill sat at $21 billion. The pandemic year saw it dip to $20.6 billion in 2021, the only sustained drop in the entire 24-year dataset. Wage subsidies kept people employed, but total wages paid actually fell.

What happened next was unprecedented. Between 2021 and 2024, the wage bill jumped $1.9 billion in three years. That's faster growth than any comparable period in the dataset. It's nearly double the growth rate of the 2000s.

Two forces collided. First, New Zealand added workers at a pace not seen in decades. Net migration hit record highs. The workforce expanded by hundreds of thousands. More people working meant more wages paid, even before accounting for pay rises.

Second, inflation. Nominal wages had to rise because everything else did. A worker earning $50,000 in 2020 needed $58,000 by 2024 just to stand still. Multiply that across millions of workers and the wage bill swells, even if nobody's actually better off.

The 2024 figure of $22.5 billion represents a 7.2% increase over 2023. In dollar terms, that's $709 million more flowing through the economy as wages. But strip out inflation and the story changes. Real wages, adjusted for the cost of living, have barely moved since 2021.

So New Zealand now pays out twice what it did four years ago in wages. More people are working. Headline pay packets are bigger. But the acceleration in the wage bill doesn't mean the average worker is twice as well off. It means there are more of them, and the money they earn buys less than it used to.

The first doubling took 15 years. The second took nine. The third, if it happens at this pace, might take six. Whether that's good news depends entirely on what inflation does next.