Porirua economy lagging the rest of NZ

Wednesday, 13 May 2026

Porirua’s economy shrank marginally across 2025, lagging the meagre growth nationwide, according to a council report.

The Porirua City Council’s latest growth report, citing figures from Infometrics, showed the city’s GDP contracted by 0.7% throughout 2025 while New Zealand’s economy grew by 0.4% in that time.

The figures continue to show a stagnating Porirua economy, which in 2023 was one of the fastest growing economies in the Wellington region.

The council report said economic growth had been uneven across the country and industries. Thanks to soaring international demand and higher export prices, rural regions and industries had performed better but the pace was slower in urban areas.

Throughout last year the number of employed Porirua residents sank by 2.5%, dragged down by evaporating jobs in the construction sector, one of the city’s largest employers, on the back of a weak housing market. It was running higher than the 1.2% drop in employment nationwide.

And the worst might have not passed yet, the report warned. Although the nationwide unemployment rate stood at 5.3% at the end of 2025, Porirua’s unemployment rate was at 5.8%, up from 5.5% in September – a sign that “the rate may have not yet peaked”.

The number of businesses in Porirua continues to fall, furthering the trend that started in the second half of 2024. By December 2025, it was down 1.7% compared to 12 months ago. In the rest of country, the number of businesses rose by 1.1%.

But there is an economic silver lining on the horizon.

Latest Infometrics data showed Porirua’s GDP began rising again in the last three months of 2025.

Compared with the nation’s proportion of youth aged 15-to-24 who are not in employment, education, or training (NEET), Porirua remained “relatively” low in the end of 2025 at 12.3%, compared the national average of 13.3%. It was only “a little higher” than the low of 10.7% recorded in June 2023 when the economy was performing much better, said Infometrics.

While government statistics show there was only a small number of households in emergency housing and no children were living in emergency housing, the growth report said it did not reflect the reality observed by frontline services where people were resorting to couch-surfing or sleeping in cars.

Meanwhile, major changes by the Government to policy direction and funding forced the council to reconfigure its partnership with local iwi Ngāti Toa and other organisations on housing from pro-actively building social housing to responding to housing issues in the city.

The growth report further mentioned 231 Porirua households on the social housing waitlist. It had come down from the peak of 391 in September 2022 but was still significantly higher than a decade ago, when only 37 households were waiting for public housing.

Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air