Am I better off than in 2019?
Enter what you earned then and what you earn now. This compares your pay against New Zealand's official price data - overall inflation, rent, petrol, food, power and house prices - to show whether your pay actually buys more than it used to.
Pre-filled with the adult minimum wage: $17.70 an hour in 2019 and $23.95 now. Replace them with your own pay, before tax. Converting between hourly, weekly and yearly pay assumes a 40-hour week and 52 weeks a year.
Your pay buys 3.1% more than it did in 2019.
Your pay buys 3.1% more than it did in 2019. Your pay is up +35.3%; consumer prices are up +31.3%.
To keep up with prices you'd need $23.24 an hour today. You're on $23.95 - $0.71 ahead.
Then and now, cost by cost
Overall inflation is an average. Here's how your pay has done against the specific things that take the biggest bite. Each figure for 2019 is that year's average; "now" is the latest published figure.
Rent
Buys more +2.3%of your weekly pay went on the median rent ($450 a week in 2019, $595 now).
Petrol
Buys less −15.1%of 91 a week's pay would buy (210c a litre in 2019, 335c now).
Buying a house
Buys more +3.9%of your pay to match the national median house price ($572k in 2019, $745k now).
Food
Buys less −1.1%change since 2019, from Stats NZ's Food Price Index.
Power
About the same +0.0%change since 2019, from the electricity component of the CPI.
Versus the average pay rise
Ahead of average +11.1%change since 2019. Average pay rates are Stats NZ's Labour Cost Index.
How this is worked out
- "Better off" means your pay buys more. It's your pay rise divided by the price rise: if pay is up 21% and prices are up 10%, you're 10% better off (1.21 ÷ 1.10), not 11%.
- These are before-tax figures. New Zealand's lower income tax thresholds weren't adjusted between October 2010 and July 2024, so over that stretch more of each pay rise was taxed at higher rates. Your take-home pay may have kept up less well than these figures show.
- Rent is the national median weekly rent for a whole home, from new bonds lodged with MBIE - not a room in a shared house - so it reads high against a single income. What matters is whether that share has gone up or down.
- The average pay rise is Stats NZ's Labour Cost Index, which tracks pay for the same job over time. It leaves out promotions and job changes, so beating it usually means you moved up, not that your role's pay rose faster.
- Every figure is national. Stats NZ doesn't publish inflation for individual regions or cities, so this can't yet be done for a specific place.
Consumer prices, food prices, power prices and the Labour Cost Index are from Stats NZ. Rent is from MBIE's Market Rent data, petrol from MBIE's weekly fuel price monitoring, house prices from MCERT's property and sales statistics, and the minimum wage from Employment New Zealand. Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere - the calculation runs in your browser. Consumer prices are as of Jun 2026.