Here's a number that doesn't make sense at first glance: in 2024, Stats NZ recorded 22.5 million wages and salaries paid out across New Zealand. We have roughly 5 million people in the entire country. So what's going on?

The answer is simple, and it tells you everything about how New Zealanders actually work now. That 22.5 million figure isn't counting people. It's counting income sources. And the gap between those two numbers reveals a quiet transformation in how we earn our living.

Think about it. If you work a main job plus weekends at a second gig, you're two income sources. Contract for three different clients? That's three. Salary Monday to Friday, Uber on Saturday nights? Two more sources in the pile.

Do the maths. 22.5 million income sources divided by roughly 2.8 million employed Kiwis means the average worker now has about eight separate wage or salary sources over the course of a year. Not eight jobs at once, necessarily. But eight different times their IRD number pings the tax system because someone paid them.

This wasn't always the case. Back in 2021, during COVID lockdowns, that figure sat at 20.6 million. In 2000, it was lower still. The trajectory is clear: we're splintering. The single employer, the career-long job, the one payslip every fortnight? That's becoming the exception, not the rule.

Some of this is the gig economy doing what everyone said it would do. Some of it is workers taking on side hustles because one income doesn't cover what it used to. Some of it is just churn: people switching jobs more often, trying contract work, picking up seasonal roles.

But here's what the 22.5 million figure really means. It means when economists talk about employment statistics, they're measuring something increasingly disconnected from how people actually experience work. You're not just employed or unemployed anymore. You're patchworking. You're portfolio-ing. You're working more sources to make the same living.

The number climbed by 700,000 sources in just one year, from 21.8 million in 2023 to 22.5 million in 2024. That's not population growth. That's fragmentation. That's the labour market breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, and all of us navigating the gaps between them.

So next time you hear someone say 'the job market is strong', ask them which job market they mean. The one where people have steady work? Or the one where 22.5 million income sources are being divvied up among 5 million people? (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources)