National gender pay gap over time

The gender pay gap in New Zealand has reduced steadily from 16.3% in 1998. It is currently 5.2%.

Since 1998, Stats NZ have reported on New Zealand’s national gender pay gap. They currently publish the figure annually in the June Household Labour Force Survey release.

Explore through the rest of this tool to see a breakdown of the gender pay gap data by other factors, such as by industry, region, age, and ethnicity.

Note on this data:

As the Household Labour Force Survey is a sample survey, and does not interview every person in New Zealand, there is a small amount of uncertainty for the data produced due to sample errors. 

With an estimate of 5.2%, the gender pay gap had a sampling error of about 1.9 percentage points in the June 2025 quarter. This means, Stats NZ are largely confident that the gender pay gap lies between 3.3 and 7.1%.

However, it is still accurate to report and refer to the current national gender pay gap in New Zealand as 5.2%.