The numbers that should unsettle every employer
The 2025 Hunger Monitor, New Zealand’s first comprehensive national food insecurity survey, found one in three households struggled to access affordable, nutritious food in the past year. Nearly one in five experienced severe food insecurity. The survey, conducted by the NZ Food Network across 3,000 people in late 2024, isn’t a repackaging of old data. It is the first national baseline, and it will be tracked annually.
The number that should stop business owners scrolling: just under a third of full-time workers experienced food insecurity. Not beneficiaries. Not part-timers. Full-time employed New Zealanders who cannot reliably feed themselves or their families.
NZ Food Network CEO Gavin Findlay called the findings “confronting and a little bit surprising”, noting that “the scale and scope of it across demographics, across income levels, was surprising” even to those inside the sector.
This is spreading into the middle market
The most striking detail in the report is the composition of the affected group. 68% of people reporting food insecurity said it was their first time struggling to afford food. Two-thirds are not chronically poor. They are previously stable households that have crossed a threshold they never expected to reach.
Even more telling: 12% of households earning over $156,000 annually reported some form of food insecurity. Findlay pointed to “the volatility of peoples’ lives at the moment” as an explanation, where one unexpected cost, a mortgage rate reset, or a partner losing hours can tip a household from coping to crisis. Housing costs consuming outsized portions of even high incomes are the obvious culprit.
The Ka Makona 2025 report from the Zero Hunger Collective estimates approximately 850,000 people have starting wages within low-income ranges, roughly 20% of the working-age population experiencing inadequate income. Across five annual editions of that report, income increases have consistently failed to keep pace with living costs.
Foodbanks are running hotter than during Covid
South Auckland Christian Foodbank delivered 40,000 food parcels last year, averaging 177 per day, up from 100 per day at the height of the pandemic. CEO Ian Foster was blunt: “Income has not increased anywhere near living costs. Until we turn that around, we’ve got a major problem.”
Mangere Budgeting Services Trust CEO Lara Dolan reported demand for food support increased 49% in the 2025 financial year, with 20% more people supported year-on-year to January 2026. Her team noted that “many of the families we support are in part-time employment”. Employment status alone is no longer a reliable indicator of food security.
Meanwhile, the government has been tightening the tap. Emergency food grant decline rates rose 60% since 2023, climbing from 3.96% to 6.33% even as total applications held steady at around 1.4 million per year. MSD’s “strengthened hardship approvals” have pushed demand onto community providers already at breaking point.
New Zealand is the outlier, and not in a good way
Globally, food insecurity has been improving in developed nations. New Zealand went the other direction. NZ’s food insecurity rate rose from 10% in 2014-2016 to 16.4% in 2020-2023, while comparable OECD nations tracked lower: Australia at 12.9%, the US at 9.1%, Canada at 8.5%, and the UK at 5.7%. NZ’s undernourishment rate remains below 2.5%, confirming this is not a supply failure. It is an affordability failure in a country that exports food.
Regionally, Waikato recorded the highest rate at 40%. Auckland and Wellington sat at 32%. Among Pacific peoples, the rate was 64%. Among Maori, 51%. Households with disabilities faced an 82% risk.
What this means for business
Suppress a third of household food spending and the effects ripple outward. Retail, hospitality, and FMCG feel it first as discretionary spending collapses. But the workforce dimension is where business owners should pay closest attention. Food-insecure employees are less productive, more likely to be absent, and more likely to leave for any marginal pay increase. The 68% “first-timers” figure means this is now hitting the households that take out mortgages, buy cars, and patronise small businesses.
The political pressure is building too. With 14% of children in material hardship against a government target of 6% by 2027/28, the gap is widening, not closing. When a third of the country is struggling to eat, minimum wage hikes, food price regulation, and housing cost interventions become politically inevitable. Business owners who dismiss this as a welfare headline are misreading the most important consumer demand signal of the year.
Sources
- RNZ: One in three households struggled for food in past year, Hunger Monitor report finds (2025-05-05)
- NZ Herald: New report shows food insecurity is widespread in NZ, with Waikato hit the hardest (2025-05-05)
- NZ City: One in three households struggled for food in past year (2025-05-05)
- Zero Hunger Collective: Ka Makona 2025 press release (2025)
- Scoop: Hunger Monitor Report Confirms Growing Food Insecurity (2025-05-05)
- The Spinoff: Emergency food grant decline rates up 60% in two years (2026-03-04)
- The Spinoff: Around the world, food insecurity is improving. In New Zealand it’s getting worse (2024-07-31)
- NZ Herald: One in seven New Zealand children living in material hardship (2025)
- NZ Treasury: Budget 2025 Child Poverty Report (2025)