Part-time work while you study in NZ

Where student jobs are listed

• Student Job Search (sjs.co.nz), the job board for tertiary students, which you can keep using for up to two years after you graduate. Nearly half of its roles are casual.
• Seek: search "part time", "casual" and "student" with your suburb or campus.
• Your university or polytechnic: its job board, and the jobs on campus itself, such as the library, events, open days and tutoring.
• Walking in can still work for hospitality and retail. Go at a quiet time, ask for the manager, and leave a one-page CV.
• Holiday work hires before the break. Christmas retail and summer seasonal jobs are filled while you are sitting exams, so apply before they start.

Put the hours you can reliably work each week next to your CV. It answers the first question most student employers ask, and it stops you being rostered into a lecture.

Casual, part-time or fixed-term

The law does not define "casual", so read what your agreement says rather than what the ad called it. Employment New Zealand describes the difference like this:

• Casual: you work when it suits you and your employer, you can turn work down, there is no regular pattern, and there is no guarantee or expectation of ongoing work. Where the work is too irregular for four weeks of annual holidays to be practical, you can be paid 8% holiday pay with each pay instead.
• Part-time: less than about 30 hours a week, with regular, guaranteed hours or days. You build up annual holidays like anyone else.
• Fixed-term, such as a summer job: on a genuine fixed term of less than 12 months, you can agree to 8% added to each pay instead of annual holidays. It must be in the agreement and shown separately on your payslip.

Sick leave starts after six months with the same employer. If your hours are irregular, the six months counts if you worked an average of 10 hours a week, with at least 1 hour in every week or 40 hours in every month. Then you get 10 days a year, whatever your hours.

Before you accept, ask how rosters work around exams, and get the answer in writing. The leave guide has the full rules, which change when the Employment Leave Act 2026 takes over on 6 August 2028.

Your pay and the minimum wage

From 1 April 2026 the adult minimum wage is $23.95 an hour. The starting-out rate, $19.16, only applies if you are 16 or 17 and have been with your employer less than 6 months, 18 or 19 and have been on a specified benefit for 6 months or more, or 16 to 19 and doing industry training of at least 40 credits a year. An 18 year old starting university on a Student Allowance does not fit any of those, so is owed the adult rate from the first hour.

A trial shift is work, and work has to be paid. Employment New Zealand's example is that making two or three coffees at a barista interview is fine, but a whole shift, or even a few hours, would likely be employment. Getting your first job in NZ after study covers IRD numbers and the rest of the first-week paperwork.

How work affects your Student Allowance

StudyLink lets you earn up to $284.70 a week before tax before your Student Allowance is affected. Above that, it reduces cent for cent: every extra dollar you earn that week is a dollar less allowance.

• It works week by week. Your allowance for a week is affected by what you earn in that week, so one big week can cut one payment while the others stay whole.
• Tell StudyLink by the Sunday of the week you earn the money, not the week you are paid, in MyStudyLink. The amount you declare carries on every week until you change it.
• Holiday pay counts in the week you get it. A final pay with a lump of holiday pay in it can wipe out that week's allowance, so time the end of a job with that in mind.
• A partner's income counts if you are in a relationship StudyLink recognises.
• Get it wrong and it becomes a debt. StudyLink says that if you do not tell it about your income, it may pay you too much and you will have to pay it back.

If your allowance falls because of what you earned, living costs from your student loan can make up some of the gap: StudyLink lets you borrow living costs alongside an allowance of less than $333.48 a week, as long as the two together are no more than $333.48.

Tax codes for one job or two

Inland Revenue says you have one main income, your highest income source. Everything else is secondary.

• Your main job is usually on M, or M SL if you have a student loan. Fill in a tax code declaration (IR330) on your first day, or your employer has to take 45%.
• A second job takes a secondary code, chosen by your total income from all your jobs for the year: SB up to $15,600, S up to $53,500, SH up to $78,100, ST up to $180,000 and SA above that. Add SL if you have a student loan.
• The wrong code shows up after 31 March, as a bill or as money Inland Revenue held all year. A student earning $12,000 across two jobs belongs on SB for the second job, not S.
• ME gives you the independent earner tax credit through your pay, but only on a net income of $24,000 to $70,000 a year, so it rarely fits a student job.

If you have two jobs, the Second job page in Your Career works out which secondary code fits your total income, and what the code you are on will cost or refund you at the end of the year.

Your student loan and the exemption

Inland Revenue's repayment threshold is $24,128 a year, which is $464 a week or $928 a fortnight. In your main job, 12% of every dollar over the pay-period threshold goes to your loan. On a secondary job with SL, 12% of every dollar goes to it, from the first dollar.

That catches students twice: a summer job that pays over $464 a week, and a small second job on S SL. Both take deductions even when your income for the whole year will stay under $24,128. If you are studying full-time and expect to earn under the annual threshold, apply in myIR for a repayment deduction exemption ("Apply for a reduced deduction rate"). It runs from the day you apply to 31 March, so apply again each year you need it.

International students

• 25 hours a week in term. On 3 November 2025, the work hours allowed on student visas went up from 20 to 25 hours a week, for visas granted from that date. If your visa still says 20 hours, you need a variation of conditions or a new visa before you can work 25.
• Full-time in the holidays only where your visa conditions allow it, in the scheduled breaks.
• Check your own conditions in your eVisa, in the letter Immigration New Zealand sent when it granted the visa, or through its Visa Verification Service. An employer can check them there too.
• Your employment rights are the same as everyone else's: the minimum wage, holiday pay, rest breaks and a written agreement. Getting a job in NZ as a migrant covers the rest.

KiwiSaver on a student job

If you are 18 to 65, eligible and not already a member, a new job that lasts longer than 28 continuous days means your employer must enrol you automatically. From 1 April 2026 that is 3.5% of your pay from you, matched by 3.5% from your employer. You can opt out from day 14 to day 56 of the job, and you have to do it again at each new job.

Before you opt out, count the government contribution: from age 16, the government adds 25 cents for each dollar you put in between 1 July and 30 June, up to $260.72, which takes $1,042.86 of your own money. The KiwiSaver guide covers what happens between jobs.