Labourers salary in New Zealand
$54,080NZD/YR
Labourers in New Zealand earn a median of $54,080 a year, about $27.00 an hour.
SOURCE·Stats NZ — Household Labour Force Survey (income)·CC BY 4.0·REVIEWED JUN 2025 YEAR
What $54,080 is actually worth
Move this wage out of New Zealand and it converts to $31,226. Spend it where it was earned and it buys what $35,368 buys in the United States. Those are two answers to two different questions, and the distance between them is the thing worth reading — here it is a factor of 1.13.
At the exchange rate At local prices The disagreement
The hollow marker is the exchange-rate reading: what the money is worth if it leaves. The solid marker is the purchasing-power reading: what it is worth if it stays. The hatched span between them is the disagreement, and it is what every single-country salary site leaves out.
SOURCE·European Central Bank reference rates (via Frankfurter) and World Bank PPP conversion factor PA.NUS.PRVT.PP·FX 2026-07-29·REVIEWED PPP 2025
How New Zealand arrived at this figure, and what it is not
- Stats NZ publishes Household Labour Force Survey (income) for the reference period JUN 2025 YEAR. We take the occupation row as released and change nothing in it.
- Household survey — published only at ANZSCO major-group level
- Where the agency publishes a distribution we carry the whole distribution, because a single average throws away the part of the answer people are actually asking about.
- The wage is then read twice: converted at the European Central Bank reference rate for 2026-07-29, and divided by the World Bank purchasing-power conversion factor for NZL. Both readings are printed; neither is presented as the answer.
- Countries measure pay differently. A tax return, an employer payroll survey, a PAYE sample and a household survey are four different instruments, and gaps of a few per cent between countries are the instruments, not the wages.
converted = NZD 54,080 / FX(NZD->USD) adjusted = NZD 54,080 / PPP(NZL) disagreement = adjusted / converted
Every figure this page rests on
| Reading | NZD | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Median | $54,080 | The middle earner |
| Mean | $52,000 | Pulled up by top earners |
| Hourly | $27.00 | As published |
| Employed in this occupation | 219,200 | Head count in the release |
Stats NZ · JUN 2025 YEAR
SOURCE·Stats NZ — Household Labour Force Survey (income)·CC BY 4.0·REVIEWED JUN 2025 YEAR
How it changes with age
| Age group | Median (annualised) |
|---|---|
| 15-19 | $16,224 |
| 20-24 | $52,000 |
| 25-29 | $54,080 |
| 30-34 | $58,240 |
| 35-39 | $59,852 |
| 40-44 | $58,240 |
| 45-49 | $62,400 |
| 50-54 | $58,240 |
| 55-59 | $58,240 |
| 60-64 | $56,992 |
| 65-* | $38,740 |
Stats NZ publishes this age breakdown even though it does not publish detailed occupations — so on this one dimension New Zealand's open data is richer than most countries'.
Men and women in this work
| Median pay | Share of the higher figure | |
|---|---|---|
| Men | $58,240 | 100% |
| Women | $43,940 | 75% |
This compares all men against all women working in this occupation group. It is not the same job at the same level and it does not measure unequal pay for equal work — it reflects which roles, seniorities and hours each group actually holds.
By ethnic group
| Ethnic group | Median pay |
|---|---|
| Other | $59,852 |
| Māori | $56,368 |
| Pacific Peoples | $56,160 |
| Asian | $53,248 |
| European | $52,000 |
| MELAA | $52,000 |
Stats NZ publishes earnings crossed with ethnicity, which most countries' headline tables do not. Groups overlap — people can report more than one ethnicity — so these do not sum to the total.
What people ask next
- How much do labourers earn in New Zealand?
- The median is $54,080 a year, about $27.00 an hour, according to Stats NZ, Household Labour Force Survey (income), June 2025 year.
- Is that figure before or after tax?
- Before. Every figure on this page is gross pay as the statistics agency published it — income tax, levies and any deductions come off afterwards, and they differ enough between countries that we do not model them.
- Why is the US-dollar figure different depending on where I read it?
- Because there are two of them. $54,080 converts to $31,226 at the exchange rate on 2026-07-29, and buys what $35,368 buys in the United States once New Zealand's price level is accounted for. The first answers "what could I wire abroad", the second answers "how well does someone live on this".
What this salary borrows
On the rough serviceability multiple lenders use, someone earning $54,080 could borrow around $297,440 on their own, or about $594,880 on two incomes like it. That is a starting point, not an approval — your deposit, debts and the rate at the time move it a long way.
Check that against median house prices by New Zealand suburb →
Borrowing capacity shown at 5.5× income, before deposit. Not lending advice.
