Manufacturing Hits Five-Year High, Wages Achieve a World-Beating Low

New Zealanders have posted some of the worst wage growth in the developed world in recent years, according to a new OECD report, once inflation is accounted for. The finding landed the same week the Government issued a press release celebrating manufacturing output reaching its highest level in five years. Two economic indicators, moving in opposite directions, arrived within days of each other. Only one came with a headline announcing it.

The manufacturing release noted the index had not been this healthy since July 2021, evidence, the Government said, that the economy is turning a corner. The OECD figures, by contrast, generated no ministerial statement, no press conference, and no corner. Wage growth, adjusted for what things now cost, has simply been bad, and remains bad, and nobody at the Beehive has yet found the framing that turns “worst in the world” into “record result”. Give them time.

Workers waiting for their pay packets to reflect the manufacturing sector’s good mood are advised not to hold their breath, or their invoices. The factories, it turns out, can grow output at a five-year high while the people running the machines watch their real wages shrink at a world-beating pace. Somewhere between the two figures sits the actual New Zealand economy. It has not issued a press release either.