Thousands of us are building income alongside (or instead of) the day job: freelancing, selling, making, consulting. The Parallel Economy Report is the first independent annual study of who we are, what we’re building and what we need.
Some of us need more money. Some of us want more freedom or control. Some of us are preparing to leave employment, and others already have. Most of us are building quietly, around jobs, families and other commitments.
The Parallel Economy Report gives this movement a proper mirror.
You don’t need to be running a full-time business to be part of this. If you’re building any kind of income outside a job, at any stage, this study is for you:
Nobody knows where New Zealand sits on any of these. That is what the survey settles.
This is not about hustle culture. It is about a structural shift in how we as New Zealanders create income and security, built after work, on weekends, around rising costs. Thousands of us are already doing it, yet almost no independent data exists about who we are or what holds us back. This report is designed to make us visible — not to scrutinise what we earn, but to understand what we need.
Any of us building income outside traditional employment, at any stage, including if you haven’t started yet. Running a side business alongside a job, testing an idea, transitioning out of employment, fully self-employed or already growing something: all of it counts. You need to be 18 or over.
The survey opens 1 October and closes 31 October. Preliminary findings are released mid-November, and the full report is published in late January.
The headline report, including the findings, the big numbers and the analysis, is published free at paralleleconomy.nz. For organisations that need to go deeper, granular datasets and segment-level breakdowns will be available to purchase. That is what keeps the report free for everyone else.
The report is run by Rachel Mills, founder of Side Hustles NZ and the Parallel Economy Report. It isn’t commissioned by a bank, platform, agency or government body, but we’ll be plain about the commercial side: the findings may inform stakeholder briefings and partner products alongside the free public report. Partners never receive individual responses or contact details, and they don’t control the findings.
Your survey answers are anonymous, so your name isn’t attached to them. If you give us your details we store them separately, away from your answers. We only ever publish grouped results, like “38% of people in Auckland”, never anything that points to you or what you’re building.
Only if you opt in. At the end of the survey you can choose to be contacted again in future years and to enter the prize draw. Each is optional and saying yes to a future invitation doesn’t commit you to taking part.
If you join the notification list, we’ll send you the survey link when it opens, the preliminary findings, and the full report in January, then get in touch next year when we run the study again. None of your personal details will be shared or sold.