A dog attack in Timaru made the news this week. What didn't: the near-collapse in serious workplace injuries among New Zealand's oldest workers.

ACC recorded just 12,225 serious injuries to workers aged 90 and over in 2024. That's the second-lowest figure in 19 years. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

Three years ago, that number was 29,499. It's now 57% lower.

The drop happened almost overnight. In 2021, nearly 30,000 workers in this age group suffered serious injuries. By 2022, it had crashed to 12,597. It hasn't recovered since: 12,672 in 2023, 12,225 in 2024.

This isn't a gradual trend. Something fundamentally changed between 2021 and 2022 about either how many New Zealanders over 90 are working, how dangerous their work is, or how injuries are being counted.

The timing matters. COVID-19 restrictions ended in 2022. Many older workers who stayed home during the pandemic never returned to physical workplaces. Retirement savings took a hit during inflation, but perhaps not enough to keep 90-year-olds in dangerous jobs.

Or maybe they're still working, but differently. Remote work exploded during the pandemic and stuck around. A 92-year-old doing consulting work from home faces different risks than one still on a factory floor or farm.

But here's what makes this number strange: you'd expect the total pool of 90+ workers to be growing, not shrinking. New Zealand's population is ageing rapidly. More people are living into their nineties than ever before. More are working past traditional retirement age because they can't afford not to.

Yet their injury numbers tell the opposite story.

The data raises questions ACC and Stats NZ aren't answering in their published figures. Are fewer people over 90 working in 2024 than in 2021? Are they working in safer industries? Or did something change in how ACC classifies or counts injuries for this age group?

What we know for certain: 17,266 fewer workers aged 90+ suffered serious injuries in 2024 compared to three years earlier. That's 17,266 fewer emergency room visits, fewer surgeries, fewer recovery periods for people whose bodies don't heal the way they used to.

The public conversation about workplace safety focuses on young workers, on high-risk industries, on construction sites and forestry blocks. Nobody's talking about what happened to New Zealand's oldest workers between 2021 and 2022, or why their injury rate dropped by more than half and never bounced back.

Maybe it's good news. Maybe thousands of 90-year-olds finally retired. Maybe someone made their workplaces dramatically safer. Maybe they're all working from home now, filing reports instead of lifting boxes.

Or maybe the numbers are telling us something else entirely about who's working, who's getting counted, and who's falling through the cracks of the statistics we use to measure workplace safety in New Zealand.