A fatal shooting in a Christchurch home (as reported by RNZ, February 2026) makes instant news. A warehouse worker who gradually loses feeling in their fingers from ten years of scanning barcodes? That's just background noise.

Except it's happening to 9,768 New Zealand workers every year.

Compression syndrome — nerve damage from repetitive motions or sustained awkward positions — just hit its highest level since 2009. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, work-injuries-by-industry) You won't see it in today's court reports or coroner inquests. There's no dramatic moment, no emergency callout. Just thousands of Kiwis whose hands gradually go numb, whose wrists stop working properly, whose ability to earn a living slowly evaporates.

The trajectory tells the story. In 2021, compression syndrome claims dropped to 6,378 — probably because COVID lockdowns meant fewer people doing repetitive factory work, fewer checkout operators scanning groceries for eight-hour shifts, fewer workers gripping tools all day. Then we went back to work. By 2022, claims had shot up to 9,714. They've stayed brutally high ever since.

Here's what that number represents in practice: a meat worker whose hand cramps so badly they can't hold a knife. A dental hygienist who can no longer feel the difference between tooth and gum. A builder who drops their hammer three times in an hour because their grip just... stops.

Unlike a motocross fatality or a workplace fall, compression syndrome doesn't announce itself. It creeps. A little tingling. Then numbness. Then pain that wakes you at 3am. By the time you're filing an ACC claim, you've probably been ignoring the symptoms for months, maybe years, because you need the paycheck.

The data doesn't tell us which industries are driving this — whether it's supermarket workers, construction, manufacturing, or healthcare. But nearly 10,000 claims means this isn't a niche problem. It's roughly 27 workers every single day developing nerve damage severe enough to seek medical help.

And unlike a dramatic courtroom case, this doesn't generate outrage. There's no defendant to cross-examine. Just ergonomic guidelines that workplaces ignore, break schedules that get skipped, and thousands of workers whose bodies are paying the price of our low-wage service economy.

While judges face questions about yelling at politicians and coroners investigate tragic deaths, compression syndrome quietly disables more workers than any inquest will ever examine. The difference? These injuries happen one nerve at a time, one worker at a time, until the cumulative damage becomes a number too big to ignore.

We're there now. 9,768 workers in a single year. The highest count in 15 years. And the only question is: how high does that number need to climb before someone treats repetitive strain as seriously as we treat dramatic workplace accidents?