Trades versus university in New Zealand: the honest return on each

Earnings over nine years, not year one

The Tertiary Education Commission tracks what New Zealand graduates earn after they finish, using tax records. Its latest figures, published in February 2026 and stated in September 2025 dollars, show medians for employed graduates who were under 25:

Most trade qualifications sit at level 4, so the last two rows include many of them, but also technician diplomas up to level 7: a rough guide to trade pay, not an exact one. The pattern is clear: building and engineering qualifications start well ahead of the median for all degrees, and the degree catches up over time. By year nine, the degree median has passed building and drawn level with engineering.

Read the figures with care. They cover domestic graduates who are employed, and they are medians, so half earn more and half less. They are not adjusted for hours, so fields with a lot of part-time work look lower. Each year comes from a different group of graduates rather than the same people followed over time, and the Commission says they are research figures, not official statistics. The field inside each route matters as much as the route: an engineering degree, for example, had a median of $68,000 in year one and $112,000 by year nine for graduates under 25.

Debt, Fees Free and apprenticeship wages

The starting positions are very different. A university student pays fees for three or four years and often borrows to do it, and many borrow for living costs too. Student loans are interest-free while you live in New Zealand, and you repay 12% of every dollar you earn over $24,128 a year until the loan is gone.

Final-year Fees Free ends on 31 December 2026 and only covers qualifications finished by then, so anyone starting study now should plan to pay every year's fees.

An apprentice is usually an employee from the first day, learning on the job and paid for it. Apprentices earn at least $19.16 an hour (the training or starting-out minimum wage, depending on age) or the adult minimum of $23.95, and often more. At the adult minimum, a 40-hour week is $49,816 a year. Apprentices can have training fees too, so ask the employer and the training provider what they are and who pays.

Time to full pay

The years before year one matter as much as the years after. By the time a graduate starts their first full-time job, someone who went straight into an apprenticeship at the same age has been earning for several years and may be close to qualifying. That head start is money in the bank, or at least money not borrowed.

The other side is that a qualified tradesperson's pay rises more slowly after qualifying, as the table shows, unless they move into supervising, estimating or running their own business. Some of the best-paid tradespeople do exactly that. Graduates' pay tends to keep climbing for longer, especially in professional fields with clear promotion paths.

Jobs that need neither and jobs that need both

Some well-paid work needs neither a degree nor a trade qualification, especially in sales, transport and some technology roles. Our article on the highest-paying jobs without a degree covers them. Other careers combine the two: an electrician who later studies engineering, or a builder who adds a construction management qualification. The first choice at 17 or 18 does not have to be the last one.

If you are unsure, weigh what the work is like day to day. Pay differences between routes are real, but they are smaller than the difference between a job you can see yourself doing for years and one you cannot. Our guide to your first job out of study covers the first steps either way.

Modelling it on after-tax pay

Gross salaries can mislead, because tax and loan repayments take a different share at each level. At 2026/27 rates, with ACC and KiwiSaver at 3.5%, a graduate on $62,000 who is repaying a student loan takes home about $43,380 a year. A building graduate on $72,000, assuming no loan as for an apprentice, takes home about $54,400, over $11,000 more. Nine years on, a graduate on $92,000 who is still repaying takes home about $58,788, or about $66,933 once the loan is cleared, and a tradesperson on $83,000 with no loan about $61,375.

The Offer Comparer works out take-home pay for any two salaries and needs no account. Its student loan switch covers both columns, so to set a graduate repaying a loan against a tradesperson without one, run it once with the loan on and once with it off. Use the figures for the two paths you are weighing, from job ads or the table above, and compare what arrives in your account.

See every first job at its real pay