Forty-seven people at Wellington City Council found out their roles were going, after acting chief executive Anna Calver said savings targets required a reduction in roles, as reported by RNZ. Each of those 47 is a single line in a much bigger tally: the number of New Zealanders who receive wage or salary income in a tax year.

In 2024, the most recent year available, that tally hit 2,810,745 (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources). In 2000 it was 1,785,855. So over 24 years, New Zealand added 1,024,890 people who draw a wage. A million more pay packets.

What's striking is how rarely the counter goes backwards. In 24 years of data, it has fallen exactly twice. Once in 2010, when it dropped by 59,730 from the 2009 figure. Once in 2021, when it dropped by 52,272 from 2020. Every other year, more Kiwis were on a payroll than the year before.

The two dips behaved completely differently, though. After the 2010 fall, the recovery crawled. By 2013 the count was 2,218,065, still below where it had been in 2009. It took until 2014, five years, for the number of wage earners to clear its pre-GFC level. The 2021 dip did the opposite. By 2023 the count had reached 2,722,101, comfortably past the 2020 figure of 2,623,065, and 2024 added another 88,644 on top.

Here's the part that surprised me. Of that million-person increase since 2000, 478,335 came in the first 14 years, and 546,555 came in the last 10. More than half the growth of an entire generation happened after 2014. Migration, an older workforce staying in paid work longer, and a population that keeps growing all plausibly sit behind that, and this dataset can't separate them.

Now the honest caveat, because it matters a lot here. This is a head count of people with wage or salary income, not a count of full-time jobs, and not a measure of hours or dollars. Someone with three weeks of casual work counts the same as someone on a full-year salary. A record number of wage earners is fully compatible with people working fewer hours for pay that buys less. The series also stops at 2024, so it tells you nothing about what has happened in the labour market this year, including those 47 Wellington roles.

That's why I think the head count, on its own, is the wrong thing to celebrate. A rising number of people on a payroll is a genuine sign the economy keeps absorbing new workers. It is not evidence that any individual is better off. The most useful reading of this series is as a floor: it shows how many households have at least one wage coming in, and that floor has held in 22 of the last 24 years.

When a council trims 47 roles, or a government department restructures, the national line barely twitches. It moved by 88,644 in a single year. But the line is made of people, and the two years it did fall are the two years New Zealanders remember hardest.