[WaylonKenning]

I'm from New Zealand. What's our major companies? None of them employ more than 20,000 employees globally. Sure that's a lot of people to lose a job, but the big companies are building, groceries, airlines, and telecommunications. If the companies go under, the demand for the products doesn't disappear.

As for unemployment rate, 3.9%. Pretty close to the UK, USA, China.

As for tax, on $100K USD, you'd be taxed 28.3% on your income, and 15% on your consumption via GST.

[verttii]

Interesting, since New Zealand is in many ways comparable with Finland.

In Finland the tax rate for $100K USD would be 41.3% on average. The common consumption tax is 24% (VAT). On top of that, certain goods like alcohol, gas, cars, could have additional goods specific tax that could be well over 100%.

Unemployment stands at I think 6.6%.

[mxuribe]

I had heard of numerous great things of New Zealand related to jobs (low unemployment), good salaries/wages, etc...And then i read something the other day about either Auckland or Wellington being the cities with among the highest costs of living, as compared to other global cities (like, really high on the list). I guess it sort of shocked me....Mind you, I'm not an economist, but I naively assumed that healthy economies wouldn't necessarily have such cities/regions with disproportionately high costs of living. But, I guess in the case of (again, sorry for not recalling exactly which city it was) Auckland or Wellington, it sure sounds like it to me. Nevertheless, I look forward to visiting your beautiful country, and contributing my tourist money to your economy! ;-)