While households froze their spending in response to power bills and insurance premiums, one slice of the economy kept growing: self-employment income hit $416.5 million in 2024, up from $409 million the year before. (Source: Stats NZ, earnings-by-industry)

Here's the tension: wage earners are tightening their belts. Self-employed Kiwis are pulling in more money than ever. The gap between those two realities is the story of New Zealand's economy right now.

Four years ago, in 2020, self-employment income sat at $344 million. Since then, it's climbed 21 percent. That's not inflation-adjusted. That's raw growth while the rest of the country worried about whether they could afford heating.

This isn't about tradies suddenly getting rich. It's about structural change. When businesses can't afford permanent staff, they hire contractors. When professionals get made redundant, they hang out a shingle. When companies want flexibility, they pay invoices instead of salaries.

The self-employment figures don't track how many people went solo. They track total income. Which means either more people are doing it, or the same people are earning significantly more, or both. Given what's happening in the job market, probably both.

The 2024 jump is particularly telling. Self-employment income grew by $7.4 million in a single year. That's the second-largest annual increase in the dataset's 24-year history, beaten only by 2022's post-lockdown surge of $35 million.

Meanwhile, households told pollsters they were cutting back on discretionary spending because their power bills climbed 20 percent and their insurance premiums went through the roof. Someone's still making money. It's just not coming through a regular paycheck.

This creates a strange economy. Self-employed workers don't get sick leave, annual leave, or KiwiSaver contributions from an employer. They invoice for their time and hope clients pay on schedule. When they can't work, they don't earn. When the economy slows, they're the first to feel it.

But right now, they're holding up better than the wage economy. Which suggests businesses are still spending, they're just spending differently. Hiring a contractor for three months costs less than hiring an employee for a year. No redundancy obligations. No HR process. Just a contract that ends when the work's done.

The question nobody's asking: what happens when all that self-employment income dries up? Because it will. Contractors are the first thing businesses cut when revenue drops. The flexibility that makes them attractive now makes them vulnerable later.

For now, though, self-employment is one of the few bright spots in the earnings data. While everyone else froze their spending, sole traders kept invoicing. That's not a sustainable model for an economy. But it's the one we've got.