Soaring bills are putting household spending on ice, RNZ reported this week. Retailers are bracing for a tough year. But here's the number that reframes the story: retail workers in New Zealand earned a combined $86.2 billion in 2024. (Source: Stats NZ, earnings-by-industry)

That's not a typo. Total earnings in the retail sector hit a record high last year, up from $83.9 billion in 2023 and $70.9 billion in 2020. Over four years, retail workers' collective pay packets grew by $15.3 billion.

So if retail workers are earning more than ever, why are shops empty?

Because that money never makes it to the till. Power bills, rates, insurance, mortgage payments. The earnings are being vacuumed up before anyone gets near a shopping centre. You can't spend what's already gone.

The data shows how completely the cost-of-living crisis has rewired the economy. Retail employment hasn't collapsed. People are still working, still getting paid. The sector added billions to its wage bill. But those billions aren't circulating anymore. They're trapped, siphoned off to cover the fixed costs that won't stop rising.

This is the quiet crisis retailers face. It's not that their customers are unemployed. It's that their customers are employed and still broke.

Between 2020 and 2024, retail sector earnings grew 21.5%. That sounds healthy until you remember food prices jumped 22% in the same period, insurance costs exploded, and mortgage holders saw their monthly payments double. Every dollar of that wage growth was spoken for before it hit the bank account.

The numbers reveal something politicians don't want to say out loud: wage growth doesn't fix this. You can't out-earn structural cost increases. When your power bill, your rates, your insurance, and your rent all climb faster than your pay, more income just means more money disappearing into the same holes.

Retail spent four years adding billions to its payroll. Workers are earning more. And yet shops are reporting their weakest consumer spending in years, because earning more and having more are no longer the same thing.

This is what happens when fixed costs run wild. The money exists. It's just not free anymore.