Report

Home injuries take more paid time off work than work and road combined, and ACC pays nothing for the first week

Source: ACC, Injuries in New Zealand report acts as call to action

ACC's 2025 numbers put 6.4 million days of paid compensation on injuries at home, more than work and road injuries together. Those are the injuries with no employer-paid first week: ACC starts on day 8, at up to 80 per cent of earnings.

By Henry Smith · ACC · 2026-06-17

What this means for you Most of the paid time off work in ACC's data comes from injuries at home and in sport, not on the job. For those injuries ACC pays nothing for the first week off, then at most 80 per cent of earnings. Across an absence of a month to six months, a household leaning on ACC alone gets back 60 to 77 per cent of its normal pay.

Written by Henry Smith · Reviewed by Smiths Insurance & KiwiSaver, licensed Financial Advice Provider (FSP712931)

Most of the paid time off work in New Zealand does not start at work. It starts at home. Injuries at home ran up 6.4 million days of weekly compensation in 2025, ACC's name for the money it pays people too injured to work. Work injuries ran up 4.7 million days and road injuries 1.3 million, so home beat the other two put together (ACC, 17 June 2026).

Home is also where ACC pays least readily. Get hurt at work and your employer "must pay you 80% of your usual pay, for the first week". Get hurt on your own back steps and that first week is unpaid, ACC's payments usually start "on day 8 after your injury", and they run at "up to 80% of your average weekly earnings" (ACC).

What that adds up to for a household

Put the two rules together. A month off work with a home injury and ACC replaces about 60 per cent of that month's normal pay: nothing for week one, then 80 per cent for the other three. Stay off for six months and it works out near 77 per cent (arithmetic ours, from the same ACC page).

Time off work	Share of normal pay replaced
1 week	nothing
4 weeks	60 per cent
13 weeks	73.8 per cent
25 weeks	76.8 per cent

Arithmetic ours, from the same ACC weekly compensation page: nothing for the first week, then up to 80 per cent.

The longer the absence, the closer the total creeps to 80 per cent, and it never arrives. That 80 applies only to earnings under ACC's cap, so higher earners get back less again. And ACC is accident compensation: an income that stops because of illness sits outside every number in this article.

Where the days actually come from

ACC accepted more than two million claims in 2025, and injuries caused over 20 million days away from work. Sorted by where people got hurt, the time and the money land like this (the same ACC report).

Environment	Claims, 2025	Days of weekly compensation	Cost to ACC	Lost productivity
Home	37,000, but see below	6.4 million	$934m	$2.7b
Work	not published	4.7 million	$815m	~$2b a year, estimated
Sport and recreation	over 480,000	2.5 million	$389m	$1b
Road	less than 2% of claims	1.3 million	$201m	$549m

All figures from that report. Cost to ACC is what ACC pays out. Lost productivity is its estimate of the work that does not get done while people are hurt, a cost to the country rather than a bill ACC receives.

Chart: ACC published totals from the same newsroom story. The dashed line is our addition of the work and road figures.

Lost productivity ranks the same way: home's $2.7 billion tops work's $2 billion and road's $549 million together. Only the cost to ACC goes the other way, with home's $934 million beating work alone but not work plus road at $1.02 billion (same source; additions ours).

How long is the average home claim?

Here is ACC's home sentence in full, because the wording matters: "Last year, 37,000 home injuries resulted in 6.4 million days of weekly compensation and $2.7 billion in lost productivity, costing the scheme $934 million" (the same newsroom story).

That 37,000 reads most naturally as the home injuries that drew weekly compensation, not every home claim, because sport alone tops 480,000. Read that way, 6.4 million days across 37,000 claims is 173 days each, about 25 weeks of paid compensation on the average compensated home injury, and roughly $25,200 of cost to ACC each (same source; division ours).

Half a year is the part worth repeating to somebody. The injuries that keep New Zealanders off work longest are not happening on scaffolding. They are happening on ladders, back steps and Saturday sports fields, where the first week pays nothing and a fifth of the pay never comes back at all.

Where ACC's money goes, and who pays for it

Cost per claim runs the opposite way to the day count, and ACC never lines the four environments up. Road is the dearest: an average of $14,500 a claim, which ACC describes as "nearly ten times higher than sports injuries and three times that of workplace injuries", putting a work claim near $4,833. Sport is the cheapest and by far the most common: $389 million spread across "over 480,000 claims" is at most $810 a claim, so one road claim costs ACC roughly what 18 sport claims do (the same newsroom story; division ours).

Environment	Cost to ACC, 2025	Claims, 2025	Cost to ACC per claim
Road	$201m	~13,900, implied	$14,500, published
Home	$934m	not published	not computable
Work	$815m	not published	~$4,833, implied
Sport and recreation	$389m	over 480,000	~$810, our division

Published figures from the same report. The implied rows are our arithmetic from that $14,500 average and ACC's stated ratios; road's claim count is $201 million divided by $14,500.

ACC's numbers argue with each other here. Its "nearly ten times" ratio would put a sport claim near $1,450 rather than $810, which suggests the averages count the lifetime cost of a claim while the totals count one year's spending (same source; arithmetic ours). The report does not say. Either way the ranking holds.

Now the levy. Home and sport injuries cost ACC $1.32 billion in 2025, 62 per cent more than work injuries at $815 million (same source; addition ours). Only the work side is priced by risk. The earners' levy taken out of every pay packet "is a flat rate, currently $1.52 per $100 (excluding GST) of your liable income", while the Work levy businesses pay is set by "the risk of injury at work" and "your claims history" (ACC). The Earners' Account it feeds covers "injuries that happen during everyday activities, eg on the sports field or at home doing DIY" (ACC).

A scaffolding firm's levy is priced to scaffolding. Nobody's earners' levy is priced to their ladder, their trampoline or their touch game. That is deliberate pooling, and it also means the largest block of paid time off work in the country is priced to nobody's actual risk.

So who is exposed here

Not the person most people picture. On ACC's own data the exposed household is the one where somebody is off for weeks after a fall at home or a weekend game, carrying a mortgage on one and a bit incomes, with the first week unpaid, a fifth of the pay never replaced, and illness outside the scheme entirely.

Income protection is priced against exactly those gaps. Mortgage protection covers keeping the repayments going. Trauma cover pays a lump sum on diagnosis rather than replacing income week by week. Whether any of them earns a place in a household budget comes down to that household's fixed costs and sick-leave balance, not to fear of trampolines.

What could we not check?

Everything above comes from ACC's newsroom story. We did not read the full report behind it.

The 37,000 home figure is the weakest link. It reads most naturally as home injuries that led to weekly compensation, but the story never defines it, and if it means something else our 173-day and $25,200 figures move with it. ACC's ratios also disagree with its totals in a second way: calling road "11 per cent of total costs" implies total spending of $1.83 billion, while the four environments above add to $2.34 billion, which would make road 8.6 per cent.

Claim counts for home and work are not published, so those rows are implied or blank, and the lost-productivity figures come with no stated method. ACC caps the earnings it covers, but we could not find the current cap, so we say only that higher earners get back less than 80 per cent. The $1.52 levy rate is quoted from the same ACC business levies page, which does not say which levy year it covers.

What this means for your cover

ACC pays for accidents, not illness, and it stops at a published ceiling. Income protection is the cover that answers both. Income protection in New Zealand

Sources

Every source below was read and checked on 21 August 2026.

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