{"id":526948,"date":"2026-07-15T07:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T07:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/526948\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T07:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T07:43:10","slug":"feeling-poorer-why-kiwis-are-at-the-bottom-of-the-rankings-for-wage-growth-the-economy-of-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/526948\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling poorer: Why Kiwis are at the bottom of the rankings for wage growth \u2013 The Economy of Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you feel like you\u2019re going backwards financially, it\u2019s because you probably are, unfortunately,\u201d Jen\u00e9e Tibshraeny says on the latest episode of The Economy of Everything<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n

Real wages are adjusted for inflation, which has been high in recent years and eating into Kiwis\u2019 spending power.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Reserve Bank and government responses to the pandemic were quite strong because of the approach used … also, we\u2019ve got a small economy, we\u2019re isolated. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t adjust to these shocks as easily as people do in the US, for example. So, the inflation spike was really big, and we just haven\u2019t caught up,\u201d Tibshraeny says.<\/p>\n

The minimum wage has risen faster than median wages as the Labour-led Government increased it substantially during the pandemic years.<\/p>\n

But co-host Tamsyn Parker says the current Government hasn\u2019t pushed up the minimum wage as much.<\/p>\n

It rose to $23.95 an hour on April 1, a rise of 45c an hour.<\/p>\n

Parker adds: \u201c$5 an hour is what I got paid in my first part-time job so it doesn\u2019t sound all bad, but I\u2019m sure a lot of people on the minimum wage would say it\u2019s tough, given how much everything\u2019s gone up in cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the closed borders during the pandemic resulted in a shortage of workers and high labour demand, that has flipped in recent years with the weak economy resulting in businesses laying off staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of people I know have been made redundant in the last year or so,\u201d Parker says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite hard for workers to have the power to demand pay rises in a market where they\u2019re just worried about keeping hold of their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to the episode<\/a> for the full conversation.<\/p>\n

The Economy of Everything is available on the iHeart app<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. <\/p>\n

The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large and Tamsyn Parker, business editor for the NZ Herald. Thanks to CMC Markets. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you feel like you\u2019re going backwards financially, it\u2019s because you probably are, unfortunately,\u201d Jen\u00e9e Tibshraeny says on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[192,1975,1863,23485,138,219,5821,49738,15313,793,2082,8455,3499,305,807,13840,2190,111,139,69,1118,247926,2729,1361,223,4504,8229,60700,4276],"class_list":["post-526948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-are","tag-at","tag-back","tag-bottom","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-everything","tag-evidence","tag-feeling","tag-felt","tag-for","tag-getting","tag-growth","tag-have","tag-kiwis","tag-like","tag-long","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-poorer","tag-rankings","tag-that","tag-the","tag-theres","tag-they","tag-wage","tag-why"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}