NZ Economy Reality Check: Media Vs Lived Experience

New Zealand’s economic commentators keep insisting the recovery is underway — but for many Kiwis, it feels like the squeeze is tightening. When the numbers say “growth” but lived experience says “decline,” the credibility gap between media cheerleaders and economic reality becomes impossible to ignore.

Damien Venuto surprised free market capitalism cheerleaders might be wrong…

The Official Narrative: Recovery Is Underway

Experts keep saying the economy is improving. Here’s why it still feels so hard to get ahead

Politicians and top economists are all telling us that the economy is improving, but average New Zealanders are still finding it tough to build long-term wealth.

We’ve been told that lower interest rates would put more money in our back pockets, but just this week, the last of the major banks hiked its longer-term fixed rates.

We’ve been told the job market is improving, but the topline unemployment rate rose in the latest release from Stats NZ and wage growth remains stagnant.

We’ve been told cost pressures are stabilising, but the latest inflation figure(3.1%) was still outside the band the Reserve Bank is comfortable with.

There’s nuance that comes with an interpretation of any of these figures, but there’s a cognitive dissonance brewing between what we’re being told and what we’re actually experiencing.

And that starts to become even more defined when you dig into the numbers a little further.

NZ Stuff

The Post-War Social Contract and Its Unravelling

…the lessons taken from the fanaticism of Nazism and the brutality of Communism saw the Western World adopt welfare policies to ensure a stable working class and middle class that saw the boomers subsidised from the cradle to the grave, who then pulled that ladder up behind them turning Gen X and every generation after them user pays which built a massive economic win for the propertied boomers while degrading everyone else with unmanageable debt plus the cost of rapid climate change adaptation while the propertied boomers decry any housing intensification that impacts their property values.

That and extremist libertarian rules for corporations that allow them to behave as sociopathically as they like.

That’s why late stage capitalism is failing Mr Venuto.

Are Economic Journalists Holding Power to Account?

I don’t think we have Economic Journalists anymore, I think we have cheerleaders for capitalism.

Capitalists live in a fantasy land where everyone has to be super positive because money is so emotional and when people lose it thanks to ideological experiments from Right Wing Governments, any business journalist who critiques too negatively gets their balls kicked in for spooking the stupid consumers.

Maybe, just maybe the terrible decision to smash the Infrastructure Pipeline Labour had built for public housing, hospitals, schools and roads in 2024 had a cascade impact on the economy that has scarred the market so badly that we are actually in for far worse damage than Laim’s cheerleading can acknowledge.

Infrastructure Cuts and the Economic Ripple Effect

Maybe those ‘green shoots’ are really the dried snot of desperation?

New Zealand has always been 3 huge sparsely populated Islands that has always required the State to step in as the 40% foundation stone. National are trying to smash that up and hand over the funds to private interests, the way they are in Health.

The Warning Signs in the Data

The latest stats show Trucking, business investment and the delivery economy all slowing post the GDP numbers which alongside a weak retail season and more migration all spells for real trouble over a slowing first quarter of 2026.

Luxon promised us ‘growth, growth, growth’ last year, all we got was more people fleeing the country.

The NZ Economy is is far more brittle condition than the NZ Media wants to admit because vacant optimism is their animal spirit, like a stoned possum in the headlights.

Economic reality is not a press release. When unemployment rises, migration accelerates, retail weakens and infrastructure pipelines dry up, optimism alone cannot substitute for material conditions. If the media refuses to interrogate that gap honestly, public trust will erode faster than the GDP.