A 57-year-old scaffolder in Christchurch. A 59-year-old forestry worker in Rotorua. A 56-year-old truckie on State Highway 1. Twenty years ago, workers this age were getting seriously hurt — or killed — at double the rate they are today.

While RNZ reports a fatal shooting in a Christchurch home and a coroner's inquest into youth motocross deaths (as reported by RNZ, February 2026), another safety story is unfolding in the data: New Zealand's late-career workers are experiencing their safest period in more than two decades.

Fatal and serious injuries among 55-59 year olds dropped to 4,734 cases in 2024 — down from 10,350 just four years earlier. That's a 54% decline since 2020, and the lowest figure since 2002 (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries).

This isn't a statistical blip. The numbers have been falling steadily: 10,281 in 2021, 4,929 in 2022, 4,908 in 2023. Each year, fewer workers in their late fifties are ending up in hospital — or worse.

Two forces are likely at work. The first: New Zealand's most dangerous industries — forestry, construction, manufacturing — have spent a decade tightening safety protocols. The second, less comfortable truth: older workers may simply be leaving those industries earlier, pushed out by physical demands or pulled toward desk jobs and retirement.

The age group tells you something important. At 55-59, you're experienced enough to spot danger but old enough that your body doesn't bounce back from twelve-hour shifts on a building site. If workplaces aren't adapting to keep you safe, you're adapting by leaving.

Compare this to the early 2000s, when serious injuries for this age group routinely topped 9,000 per year. Back then, a 58-year-old labourer was just another pair of hands. Now, if the data is any guide, they're either working somewhere safer or they're not working in those sectors at all.

This matters for two reasons. First, if safety improvements are driving the decline, it shows that workplace reforms actually work — that the endless meetings and compliance paperwork translate into people going home intact. Second, if older workers are simply exiting high-risk jobs earlier, it tells you those industries are losing their most experienced people, the ones who know how to spot trouble before it happens.

The data doesn't tell you which worker hung up their hard hat and which one benefited from a safer site. But it does tell you this: whatever combination of factors is at play, being 57 and showing up to a physically demanding job in New Zealand is statistically safer than it's been in twenty-two years.

That's not a story about headlines or inquests. It's a story about thousands of small decisions — by workers, by employers, by regulators — that add up to fewer families getting the worst phone call of their lives.