Previous COVID-19 payments

Find information about previous payments that were available during COVID-19. This includes the COVID-19 Wage Subsidies, Income Relief Payment, Short-Term Absence Payment and Leave Support Scheme.

During COVID-19 our role was to help employers and self-employed people so they could keep paying their staff and keep them in their jobs. We also helped people who lost their jobs due to COVID-19.

List of previous COVID-19 payments

COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme

Available from 6 April 2020 (then called 'COVID-19 Essential Workers Leave Support Scheme') until 15 August 2023. It was to help employers, and self-employed people, pay employees who had to self-isolate due to COVID-19.

COVID-19 Short-Term Absence Payment

Available from 9 February 2021 to 17 October 2022. It was to help businesses pay their employees while they waited for PCR test results.

COVID-19 Wage Subsidies August 2021

Available from 20 August 2021 to 9 December 2021. These were a series of 9 payments to help businesses pay staff and protect jobs affected by the alert level changes on 17 August 2021.

COVID-19 Wage Subsidy March 2021

Available from 4 March 2021 to 21 March 2021. It was to help businesses pay staff impacted by the alert level changes on 28 February 2021.

COVID-19 Resurgence Wage Subsidy

Available from 21 August 2020 to 3 September 2020. It was to help businesses who had a decline in revenue keep paying their staff.

COVID-19 Income Relief Payment

Available from 8 June 2020 to 14 November 2020. It was to help people who lost their jobs because of COVID-19.

COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Extension

Available from 10 June 2020 to 1 September 2020. It was to help businesses who had a decline in revenue keep paying their staff.

2020 COVID-19 Wage Subsidy

Available from 17 March 2020 to 9 June 2020. It was to help businesses who had a decline in revenue keep paying their staff.

COVID-19 Leave payment

Available from 17 March 2020 to 27 March 2020. It was to help businesses keep paying their staff who could not work because they were in self-isolation.

Obligations and repayments

All COVID-19 payments had obligations which employers and self-employed people who applied were required to meet. These obligations included:

  • paying their employees correctly
  • keeping their employees in their jobs
  • keeping evidence to show they were eligible for the payment
  • following employment law
  • repaying the payment if they were no longer entitled to it.

The full eligibility and obligations details are listed in the declarations of each payment.

If a business does not meet these obligations, or no longer meets the criteria, they may need to repay the COVID-19 payment.

Find out when a business needs to repay this and how to repay it:

Repaying a COVID-19 payment

Businesses that received a Wage Subsidy

You can search on the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) website to see which businesses were paid a COVID-19 Wage Subsidy.

The search will tell you:

  • the name of the business
  • the number of employees they were paid for
  • the amount paid.
Wage Subsidy Employer Search - MSD website

Information for employees

Only employers or self-employed people could make an application for a COVID-19 payment. This means your employer had to apply for you, you could not make an application for yourself.

Your employer must have told you they were applying for you before they applied. They must also have had your consent to share some of your details with us. They must have declared they did this when they applied.

Your employer can't change your employment agreement unless you agree to the change first. Your employer still has to follow your employment agreement during COVID-19, including how much you get paid.

Talk to your employer if you have questions about whether they got a COVID-19 payment for you, or how this was paid.

You can also find information on the Employment New Zealand website:

Employment New Zealand website