Older Workers Are Getting Hurt at Work Half as Often as Four Years Ago
Fatal and serious injuries among 55-59 year olds have dropped 54% since 2020, hitting their lowest level in two decades. Yet almost nobody's talking about one of New Zealand's quietest workplace safety wins.
Key Figures
In 2020, 10,350 workers aged 55 to 59 suffered fatal or serious injuries on the job. Last year, that number was 4,734. That's a 54% drop in four years. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)
You have to go back to 2002 to find a year when fewer workers in this age group were seriously hurt at work. This isn't a blip. The numbers have been falling steadily: 10,350 in 2020, 10,281 in 2021, then 4,929 in 2022, 4,908 in 2023, and now 4,734.
Here's the contrast: while politicians argue about how to get older Kiwis to retire later and businesses complain about skills shortages, the data shows something nobody expected. The very workers everyone wants to keep in the workforce longer are suddenly far safer at work than they've been in a generation.
Something changed dramatically between 2021 and 2022. The injury count for this age group literally halved. That's not gradual improvement. That's a structural shift.
The timing matters. These workers, born between 1965 and 1969, hit their peak earning years just as COVID rewrote workplace norms. Remote work became normal. Dangerous physical labour moved offshore or got automated. Industries that once chewed up older workers and spat them out started competing to keep them.
But here's what makes this trend fragile: we're about to ask these same workers to stay on the job even longer. The retirement age debate isn't going away. If New Zealand wants people to work into their mid-60s or beyond, we need workplaces that don't break their bodies first.
Right now, we're winning. A 55-year-old warehouse worker, construction manager, or farm contractor is safer today than at any point this century. The question is whether we can keep them that way for another decade, or whether pushing retirement ages higher will send these injury numbers climbing again.
Every one of these 4,734 cases represents someone who went to work and didn't come home the same. A fall from height. A machinery accident. A vehicle crash. The number is still far too high. But it's also the lowest it's been in 22 years, and that deserves recognition.
New Zealand doesn't talk enough about what's actually working. This is working. Now we need to figure out why, before we lose it.
This story was generated by AI from publicly available government data. Verify figures from the original source before citing.