While New Zealanders watch storm damage cut off Wairarapa communities and infrastructure buckle under extreme weather, another story about workplace safety has been unfolding quietly in the data — and it's one of the most dramatic turnarounds in two decades.

In 2024, 10,848 workers aged 15-29 suffered fatal or serious injuries on the job. That's the lowest number since the data began in 2000. Four years ago, in 2020, that number was 29,172. Young workers — the group traditionally most vulnerable to workplace accidents — have seen their serious injury rate drop by 63% since then.

This isn't a gradual decline. It's a cliff. Something fundamental changed between 2021 and 2022, when the numbers fell from 29,790 to 12,444 in a single year — a 58% drop — and they've kept falling. (Source: Stats NZ / ACC, fatal-serious-injuries)

To put that in perspective: in 2000, when this data series started, 19,509 young workers were seriously injured. By 2010, that had climbed to 24,279. The peak came in 2021. Then everything reversed.

What happened? The data doesn't tell us directly, but the timing matters. COVID-19 reshaped how and where young people work. Industries with high injury rates — construction, manufacturing, hospitality — saw massive workforce changes. Remote work exploded. Health and safety practices, already tightening after the Pike River reforms, became impossible to ignore during a pandemic.

But here's what the numbers don't show: whether this is permanent. Whether the safety gains survive as labour markets tighten and employers cut corners. Whether young workers entering trades today will maintain this trajectory or whether we're looking at a temporary anomaly in unprecedented times.

What we do know is this: right now, a 22-year-old starting a job in New Zealand is statistically safer than at any point in the past quarter-century. That's not the story getting attention while contractors battle disaster tourists in Rangitikei and infrastructure crumbles under climate pressure.

But it's a story about resilience too — about one kind of danger we've actually managed to reduce, even as others multiply. The youngest workers, historically the most exposed to workplace harm, are now the safest they've ever been. That's 18,000 fewer families getting the call from an emergency department each year compared to 2020.

The question is whether we can keep it that way.