KiwiSaver managers are fielding a surge in hardship applications (as reported by RNZ, February 2026), and now we know exactly what's behind it. New Zealand's total employee count dropped from 50.1 million in 2024 to 49.0 million in 2025 — a loss of 1.08 million jobs in twelve months (Source: Stats NZ, business-units-by-area).

That's not a rounding error. That's the equivalent of every single job in Christchurch and Dunedin combined simply disappearing.

The trajectory tells the story. From 2021 to 2024, employment climbed steadily — 46.3 million to 47.9 million to 49.3 million to 50.1 million. Each year added roughly a million jobs. Then 2025 hit, and the trend didn't just flatten. It reversed violently.

This explains why your mate's been job hunting for four months. Why your cousin took a pay cut to stay employed. Why that KiwiSaver hardship application suddenly feels less like a last resort and more like the only option left.

The data doesn't tell us which sectors shed the most jobs — Stats NZ reports total employee counts across all business units — but the scale is unmistakable. When you lose 1.08 million positions in a year, no corner of the economy escapes unscathed. Retail, hospitality, construction, tech — they're all in the same shrinking pool.

Here's what makes this different from past downturns: the speed. The 2008 financial crisis took nearly two years to shed this many jobs. The early COVID panic in 2020 saw sharp drops, but the wage subsidy cushioned the fall and employment bounced back within months. This time, there's no bounce. Just a cliff edge.

And it's happening while cost-of-living pressures remain brutal. You're competing for fewer jobs while groceries, rent, and power bills keep climbing. The people raiding their KiwiSaver aren't being reckless — they're responding rationally to a labour market that just contracted by 2.2% in a single year.

The question now isn't whether this is a recession. The employment data already answered that. The question is how long before the job market stabilises, and whether the 49 million jobs we have left can support the people who need them.

Because right now, for over a million Kiwis, the job they had last year simply doesn't exist anymore.