Picture a Wellingtonian earning $8,000 a year from selling handmade goods on TradeMe, running occasional AirBnB bookings, and doing freelance consulting gigs that don't quite add up to self-employment. Their income shows up in tax data, but Stats NZ can't classify it. It goes into a bucket called 'Not elsewhere included'.

There are 62,751 Kiwis in that bucket right now. Five years ago, there were 160,000.

This isn't a rounding error. It's the collapse of an entire shadow economy — one that thrived when COVID forced New Zealanders to hustle in new ways, then withered as inflation made every dollar count and people abandoned their side projects for steady wages.

The numbers tell the story. In 2020, as lockdowns hit, 137,394 people were earning income that didn't fit the usual boxes. Maybe it was pandemic pivots — online tutoring, Etsy stores, cash-in-hand work that still got declared. By 2021, it was still 120,333. Even in 2022, after borders reopened, 91,350 New Zealanders were finding money in the cracks of the formal economy.

Then the squeeze began. (Source: Stats NZ (LEED), taxable-income-sources)

Last year, just 62,751 earned income in this category — 61% below 2019 levels. And remember: these are nominal figures, meaning they're not adjusted for the 20-25% inflation we've seen since 2019. In real terms, whatever money is still flowing through these channels is worth even less than it looks.

What changed? The cost of living made side hustles feel pointless. Why spend weekends doing market stalls when your power bill just jumped 30% and you need guaranteed income? Why run a small online business when petrol, shipping, and materials costs ate your margins?

This happens while Contact Energy reports a 44% profit jump and the government debates a bed tax for tourism operators. The Kiwis trying to make a few extra thousand outside the formal system? They're quietly giving up.

Here's what 62,751 people in a mystery income category really means: thousands of mini-enterprises that once helped families get ahead — or just get by — are now gone. The side hustle economy hasn't pivoted. It's disappeared.

And if you think this is just about hobby income, consider what it says about economic flexibility. When nearly 100,000 people stop earning money in ways that don't fit standard employment categories, it suggests the middle ground between full-time work and unemployment is shrinking. You're either locked into a job, or you're out.

The 62,751 still there? They're the holdouts. Everyone else has already chosen survival over experimentation.