Average salary in New Zealand › Regions
What people earn in Manawatu-Wanganui
What this figure covers
Median annual earnings across Manawatu-Wanganui, taking in Palmerston North, Whanganui, Levin, the Tararua district and the central plateau. Distribution and logistics, defence, a university and polytechnic, agriculture and food processing shape the labour market.
How to read it
This is one of the more mixed regions in the country and the single median hides that. Palmerston North carries a large institutional workforce with steady full-year earnings, while the surrounding districts are more agricultural and more seasonal. The age breakdown on this page is a better guide than the headline for anyone comparing their own position.
One thing applies to every figure on this page. It is a median of annual earnings actually received, taken from tax records, so it counts someone who worked three months of the year alongside someone who worked all twelve. That makes it a good measure of what people took home and a poor one for what a job pays. If you are trying to work out whether an offer is fair, this tells you where the offer sits against everyone earning, not against people doing that job.
Your figure stays in this browser. Nothing is sent to us and nothing is stored on our servers. The comparison is against everyone earning in that group, including part-time and part-year workers, so being above the median is a lower bar than it sounds.
By age
Median earnings by age band, for wages and salaries. The shape is the same everywhere in the country: low through the late teens because most of those earners work part of the year, rising steeply through the twenties as people move into full-year work, a long plateau from the early forties, and a decline from the fifties that is well underway before anyone reaches 65.
$0$71,968
These figures are not from a sample, so they carry no sampling error and the bars have no error range drawn on them.
The difference between men and women
In 2024, in Manawatu-Wanganui, the median for men was $62,280 and for women $47,210. The female median is 24 per cent lower.
What that number is. It compares every man who earned against every woman who earned. It is not a comparison of men and women doing the same job, and it is not a measure of whether an employer pays differently for the same work. Two things drive most of it: part-time and part-year work is far more common among women, and the two groups are not spread evenly across industries or seniority. Both of those are real and both are worth knowing about, but they are a different finding from unequal pay for equal work, which this data cannot measure at all.
Why it is here anyway. It is a published official statistic, it is what people come looking for, and the alternative to publishing it with an explanation is leaving it to be quoted without one.
$0$64,771
These figures are not from a sample, so they carry no sampling error and the bars have no error range drawn on them.
Across the series the difference has narrowed, from 45 per cent in 2000 to 24 per cent in 2024. The same cautions apply to both ends of that comparison.
Wages against self-employment
The survey splits earnings by where they came from. Self-employment records a median of $25,000 against $55,090 for wages and salaries, about 45 per cent of it.
That difference is real and it is not a statement about how hard anyone works. Self-employed income is what is left after business expenses are deducted, it is more likely to be part of a household with another earner, and it includes a large number of people running something small alongside other work or in retirement. A sole trader comparing themselves with the wage figure is comparing profit with gross pay, which are not the same measure.
$0$57,294
These figures are not from a sample, so they carry no sampling error and the bars have no error range drawn on them.
Manawatu-Wanganui earnings since 2000
Each bar is one tax year, restated in 2026.06 dollars so the series is comparable across time. In real terms, after inflation, the median has moved up 59 per cent since 2000. In the money of the day it went from $18,800 to $55,090.
Some of that is people being paid more for the same work, and some of it is a change in who is working and for how many hours of the year. Tax data cannot separate the two, so treat the direction as solid and any explanation of it as a question rather than an answer.
$0$61,454
These figures are not from a sample, so they carry no sampling error and the bars have no error range drawn on them.
Every tax year
A tax year is the year ended 31 March, so 2024 means the twelve months to 31 March 2024. The adjusted column restates each year in 2026.06 dollars using the CPI All Groups for New Zealand index at the March quarter, which is when a tax year ends. That adjustment is our arithmetic, not a Stats NZ statistic, and it is the column to use for any comparison across years.
| Tax year | Wages and salaries | In 2026.06 dollars | Self-employment | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $18,800 | $37,168 | $8,770 | — |
| 2001 | $19,620 | $37,637 | $9,920 | +4.4% |
| 2002 | $20,560 | $38,445 | $11,520 | +4.8% |
| 2003 | $21,380 | $38,995 | $10,330 | +4% |
| 2004 | $22,480 | $40,376 | $10,960 | +5.1% |
| 2005 | $23,540 | $41,139 | $11,730 | +4.7% |
| 2006 | $24,780 | $41,915 | $12,070 | +5.3% |
| 2007 | $25,920 | $42,758 | $11,500 | +4.6% |
| 2008 | $27,620 | $44,079 | $12,120 | +6.6% |
| 2009 | $29,460 | $45,660 | $12,200 | +6.7% |
| 2010 | $30,510 | $46,339 | $12,740 | +3.6% |
| 2011 | $31,120 | $45,245 | $14,280 | +2% |
| 2012 | $31,780 | $45,490 | $15,730 | +2.1% |
| 2013 | $33,000 | $46,834 | $15,000 | +3.8% |
| 2014 | $33,740 | $47,162 | $17,850 | +2.2% |
| 2015 | $34,890 | $48,647 | $18,050 | +3.4% |
| 2016 | $36,390 | $50,524 | $17,270 | +4.3% |
| 2017 | $36,930 | $50,188 | $19,540 | +1.5% |
| 2018 | $38,630 | $51,926 | $21,790 | +4.6% |
| 2019 | $40,320 | $53,408 | $21,590 | +4.4% |
| 2020 | $42,640 | $55,082 | $22,860 | +5.8% |
| 2021 | $45,210 | $57,530 | $22,960 | +6% |
| 2022 | $48,620 | $57,858 | $26,000 | +7.5% |
| 2023 | $51,720 | $57,709 | $25,960 | +6.4% |
| 2024 | $55,090 | $59,090 | $25,000 | +6.5% |
Related
- PAYE Calculator, what these figures look like after tax.
- Average salary in New Zealand, the national picture and every region.
- What households actually spend, the other side of the ledger.
- Budget Calculator, set a budget against what you actually earn.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page is from Stats NZ, Linked Employer-Employee Data, table LEED_AP1_002, retrieved through the Aotearoa Data Explorer. LEED links tax records to employer records, so it covers everyone with taxable income rather than a survey sample. That is why no figure here carries a margin of error, and why none of them describes a job.
Inflation adjustments use the Stats NZ Consumers Price Index, CPI All Groups for New Zealand, at the March quarter of each tax year, restated to 2026.06. Stats NZ data is used with attribution; the earnings figures are theirs and the adjustments are ours.
OBS_VALUE is a MEDIAN of annual earnings in New Zealand dollars, before tax. Administrative tax data. It counts everyone with taxable income in the category during the tax year, including part-time and part-year earners, so it is not the pay rate for a job.