While the Auckland Business Chamber celebrates that government efforts to ban card surcharges appear stalled, employee count data shows something more fundamental is happening to New Zealand businesses: they're shedding workers at the fastest rate in years.

Between 2024 and 2025, total employee numbers dropped from 50.09 million to 49.01 million. That's 1.08 million fewer employee positions across the country. (Source: Stats NZ, business-units-by-area)

The contrast is striking. Business lobby groups are focused on preserving the right to add surcharges to customer transactions. Meanwhile, their member businesses are cutting over a million employee positions in a single year.

This isn't a minor correction. New Zealand's employee count had been climbing steadily since 2021, adding nearly four million positions over three years. The 2024 peak of 50.09 million represented sustained growth: up 8% from 2022, up 9% from 2021. Then came 2025, and the trajectory reversed completely.

The drop is particularly notable because it breaks a pattern. Even through COVID disruptions, employee numbers kept rising. From 46.29 million in 2021 to 47.87 million in 2022 to 49.29 million in 2023. The economy was adding positions, not losing them.

What changed? The 2024-to-2025 decline represents a 2.1% drop in total employee positions. It's the first year-on-year decline visible in this dataset, and it happened at the same moment businesses were lobbying government about payment processing fees.

The timing matters. While Hicks Bay businesses worry about survival after being cut off during peak tourist season, and the Trade Minister warns about ongoing tariff uncertainty, the employee data suggests the pressure on New Zealand businesses goes far deeper than infrastructure failures or international trade disputes.

Businesses don't cut a million employee positions because of card surcharge regulations. They cut positions because demand is falling, margins are squeezed, or the economic fundamentals have shifted. The surcharge debate is a distraction from what the employment numbers are actually showing.

For context: that 1.08 million drop in employee positions is larger than the entire workforce of most New Zealand regions. It's equivalent to wiping out every employee position in Wellington, twice over.

The question isn't whether businesses should be allowed to charge surcharges. The question is why so many of them are shedding staff at this scale, this quickly, right now.