Picture a Palmerston North teacher starting their career in 2020. By the time they're four years in, the entire country's wage bill has grown by just 7%. That's $1.5 billion spread across every worker in New Zealand. Not each. Total.

The numbers: $22.5 billion in wages and salaries paid out in 2024, up from $21 billion in 2020. It sounds like progress until you look at what happened in between. (Source: Stats NZ, taxable-income-sources)

In 2021, the wage bill actually fell to $20.6 billion. Then it crawled back: $20.9 billion in 2022, $21.8 billion in 2023, finally hitting $22.5 billion last year. Four years to add back what was lost, plus a bit more.

Compare that to the previous four-year stretch. Between 2016 and 2020, the wage bill grew from $18.8 billion to $21 billion. That's $2.2 billion in four years. The post-COVID recovery? Just $1.5 billion over the same timeframe.

This isn't about individual pay packets going up or down. It's about the total volume of wages flowing through the economy. Fewer jobs, shorter hours, industries contracting: it all shows up here. And what it shows is an economy that stumbled, steadied itself, but hasn't exactly sprinted back.

The 2021 drop tells its own story. Lockdowns. Wage subsidies keeping people technically employed but earning less. Businesses shuttering. Tourism evaporating. The wage bill doesn't lie about these things.

By 2022, it was inching back up. By 2023, it had almost recovered. Now, in 2024, we're finally ahead of where we were pre-COVID. But only just.

What this means for that Palmerston North teacher: their own salary might have kept pace with inflation, might even have grown. But the economy around them? It's been treading water. The collective wage pool is bigger than four years ago, but not by much. And certainly not by enough to suggest we're in boom times.

Twenty-four years of data, going back to 2000, and this recent stretch stands out. Not for dramatic collapse. Not for roaring recovery. For slow, grinding progress after a shock that knocked everything sideways.

The wage bill is now higher than it's ever been. But the trajectory to get here has been the flattest in recent memory. That's the real story: not where we are, but how long it took to get back.