Everyone knows New Zealand's workforce is ageing. What they don't know is that our oldest workers have quietly become far less likely to die or be seriously injured on the job.

In 2021, 29,499 fatal and serious injuries were recorded for workers aged 90 and over. By 2024, that figure had collapsed to 12,225. That's a 57% drop in three years. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

The decline is so sharp it takes you back 19 years: you have to reach back to 2005 to find numbers this low.

Two stories explain what's happening here, and both matter.

The first is the obvious one: fewer people in their 90s are still working. Retirement is finally catching up with the generation that built modern New Zealand. The physically demanding jobs that caused injuries in 2021 are being left behind. Farms, construction sites, workshops. The dangerous places that broke bodies for decades are emptying of their oldest hands.

But the second story is less obvious and more important: those who are still working are safer. The rate of severe injury isn't just dropping because fewer nonagenarians are clocking in. It's dropping because workplaces have changed. Because the tasks assigned to older workers have shifted. Because someone, somewhere, made decisions that kept people alive.

This isn't about bubble-wrapping an entire generation. It's about recognising that the riskiest jobs don't have to go to the people least able to survive them. When a 92-year-old farmer climbs a ladder or drives a tractor, the odds are different than they were in 2005. The equipment is better. The awareness is higher. The culture has shifted, even if slowly.

The 2022 drop, from 29,499 to 12,597, was the sharpest single-year decline in this dataset. Something changed that year. Whether it was COVID keeping older workers home, or retirement decisions accelerated by the pandemic, or workplaces finally adjusting their safety protocols, the result was the same: thousands fewer serious injuries.

And the trend held. 2023: 12,672. 2024: 12,225. The numbers are stabilising at a level half what they were just four years ago.

Here's what this data doesn't tell you: how many people in their 90s are still working. Whether they're working because they want to or because they have to. Whether the drop in injuries reflects better safety or simply fewer workers.

But here's what it does tell you: for the first time in nearly two decades, New Zealand's oldest workers are less likely to be killed or seriously hurt at work. That's not a statistic. That's 17,274 people who didn't end up in an ACC file between 2021 and 2024.

Every one of them went home.