RNZ reports that soaring bills have put household spending on ice. Retailers are watching customers walk past their shops. The industry is nervous.

But here's what that same industry quietly did during the cost-of-living crisis: it paid its workers $86.2 billion in 2024. (Source: Stats NZ, earnings-by-industry)

That's not a typo. Retail trade earnings. the total wages paid to everyone from checkout operators to store managers to head office staff. hit a record high last year. It's $15.3 billion more than the sector paid out in 2020, when COVID first arrived and everyone thought the economy was about to collapse.

So while retail executives tell the media that customers have stopped spending, their own payroll data tells a different story. They've been hiring. They've been paying. The sector has grown earnings by 22% in four years.

This doesn't mean individual retail workers are rolling in cash. Many are on minimum wage. Many work part-time. The $86 billion is spread across hundreds of thousands of people. But it does mean the sector as a whole has been expanding its workforce and wage bill straight through the period when households supposedly stopped spending.

The trajectory is relentless. In 2021, retail earnings were $75.7 billion. In 2022, $80.7 billion. In 2023, $83.9 billion. Every single year, up. No dip. No plateau. Just steady growth, even as inflation ate into what those wages could actually buy.

Here's the uncomfortable truth buried in these numbers: retail isn't shrinking. It's growing its wage costs faster than almost any time in the past two decades. Which means either the industry has been hiring aggressively despite weak sales, or individual workers have been getting meaningful pay rises, or both.

The most likely explanation? Labour shortages. Retail had to compete for workers during the post-COVID hiring scramble, and that pushed wages up. Even now, with unemployment rising, the sector is still paying out record sums just to keep shelves stocked and tills staffed.

But it creates a weird paradox. The same industry complaining about weak consumer spending has been forced to pump billions more into wages. Those wage costs get passed on as higher prices. Those higher prices are part of why household budgets are now frozen. And round we go.

Nobody's the villain here. Retail workers deserve fair pay. Businesses need to cover costs. Customers are genuinely stretched. But the data shows something the headlines don't: this isn't just a story about households cutting back. It's also a story about an industry that kept expanding its payroll right through the squeeze, then acted surprised when customers couldn't afford the result.

The retail sector will tell you times are tough. The payroll data says they kept hiring anyway.