Last year, ACC made income payments to 1.1 million New Zealanders. That's not the number of claims filed. That's the number of people whose injuries were serious enough that they couldn't work and needed weekly compensation to survive.

Put another way: roughly one in four working-age Kiwis received an ACC cheque in 2024.

Here's the tension. In 2020, that number was 882,000. We've added 227,000 people to the ACC income roll in four years. That's a 26% jump. Over the same period, New Zealand's population grew by about 5%.

So either we're getting hurt at a dramatically faster rate, or something else changed. Perhaps it's both.

The injuries haven't changed. Construction workers still fall. Nurses still wreck their backs. Office workers still develop RSI from terrible desk setups. What's different is the volume.

Part of this is COVID's aftermath. When workplaces reopened in 2021 and 2022, injury claims surged. People who'd been working from home went back to physical jobs. Fitness levels had dropped. Rushed reopenings meant corners cut on safety. The data shows it: 2022 saw nearly 100,000 more ACC income recipients than 2021.

But that doesn't explain 2023 and 2024. The pandemic's over. Workplaces have settled. Yet the numbers keep climbing. We added 75,000 more people to ACC income support in 2023, then another 75,000 in 2024.

The alternative explanation: people are finally claiming what they're entitled to. ACC has run advertising campaigns. Workers have learned their rights. The stigma around taking time off for injury has softened slightly. Maybe the real story isn't that more Kiwis are getting hurt. Maybe it's that fewer are trying to work through injuries that should sideline them.

Either way, the cost is staggering. ACC doesn't just pay medical bills. It replaces 80% of your income while you're off work. For 1.1 million people, that's not pocket change. That's a substantial chunk of New Zealand's social safety net, and it's growing faster than the population.

Twenty-four years ago, in 2000, this figure was probably half what it is now. We don't have that exact number, but the trend is clear: we've normalised being too injured to work. Whether that's progress or a warning depends on which explanation you believe.

(Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources)