As Wairarapa communities face being cut off from their livelihoods by this week's storm, there's a longer-term story about work and safety that's been unfolding quietly across the country.

In 2021, 74,934 Māori workers lodged serious injury claims with ACC. Last year, that number was 32,916. That's a 55% drop in three years.

This isn't a gradual decline. It's a cliff edge. Between 2000 and 2021, the numbers climbed steadily — from 39,000 serious injuries to nearly 75,000. Then something changed. In 2022, the figure suddenly halved to 34,086. It's stayed at that lower level ever since.

What happened in 2022? COVID-19's aftermath reshaped entire industries. Construction slowed. Hospitality shed jobs. Forestry — one of the most dangerous sectors, heavily staffed by Māori workers — contracted sharply as export markets shifted. Fewer people working in high-risk industries means fewer serious injuries. That's arithmetic, not triumph.

But there's more to it than just fewer jobs. The peak in 2021 came during a period when workplaces were scrambling to adapt to pandemic restrictions, when safety protocols were being rewritten on the fly, when experienced workers were burning out and inexperienced ones were being rushed through training. That year was chaos for workplace safety.

The drop since then suggests workplaces have stabilised. Whether that's because safety culture improved or simply because dangerous work became less common is harder to say. The data doesn't distinguish between the two.

What it does show is that 33,000 Māori workers still suffered serious injuries last year — injuries bad enough to require more than a week off work or significant medical intervention. That's still 90 people every single day. And while the overall trend is down, it's plateaued. The numbers from 2022, 2023, and 2024 are almost identical.

Compare that to the peak years. In 2020 and 2021, more than 140 Māori workers were seriously injured every day. The difference between those years and now is the equivalent of an entire mid-sized town's workforce no longer ending up in ACC's serious injury statistics annually.

But here's the uncomfortable part: this data covers the same period when cost-of-living pressures intensified, when families started making harder choices about work. Dangerous jobs often pay better. When people are desperate, they take risks they wouldn't otherwise take. The fact that serious injuries have stayed flat for three years — not continued falling — raises the question of whether we've hit a floor determined by economic necessity rather than safety excellence.

The 2024 figure of 32,916 is still 17% lower than the 2000 baseline of 39,654, despite a growing Māori workforce. That's progress. But it's also 33,000 reasons to keep asking why people are still getting hurt at work. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)