Work to Residence Visa NZ: Requirements, Fees & How to Apply (2026)

Work to Residence in one sentence: if your occupation is on Green List Tier 2, you can apply for New Zealand residence after 24 months of full-time work in that role in New Zealand, at the required wage, for an accredited employer — no points test, and you can include your partner and dependent children aged 24 or younger in the same application.

The visa costs from NZD $6,450, you must be 55 or younger when you apply, and the resident visa itself lets you live, work and study in New Zealand indefinitely.

What the Work to Residence visa actually is

Work to Residence (WTR) is not a work visa. It is a resident visa with a work-based entrance requirement: New Zealand grants it to people who have already proven themselves in the local workforce for 24 months.

It sits inside the Green List system:

Green List tier	Residence pathway	NZ work required first
Tier 1 (164 occupations)	Straight to Residence	None — apply immediately, even from overseas
Tier 2 (37 occupations)	Work to Residence	24 months in the role

Typical Tier 2 occupations are trades, machinery operators and corrections officers — roles New Zealand needs but wants to test in the local labour market before granting residence.

Two sibling pathways also carry the “Work to Residence” name and follow the same 24-month logic: the Transport Work to Residence Visa (ship’s masters, deck hands) and the Care Workforce Work to Residence Visa (aged care and support roles). The wage rule change on 24 August 2026 (below) applies to all three.

If your occupation is Tier 1, stop reading this and go to Work to Residence vs Straight to Residence — you may be able to skip the 24 months entirely.

The requirements, one by one

The 24-month rule

When you apply, INZ looks back 30 months from your application date. Inside that window you must have completed 24 months of full-time work that meets all of these conditions:

• the job was Tier 2 on the Green List, or paid at least twice the median wage
• you were paid at or above the required pay rate the whole time (see the wage rules below)
• you held an eligible visa: any work visa (AEWV included), a Critical Purpose Visitor Visa with work rights, or an interim visa granted while you waited for a work visa decision

Three properties of the rule that most guides get wrong:

1. The 24 months do not need to be continuous. Two stretches of 12 months with a 6-month break between them qualify, as long as both stretches sit inside the 30-month window.
2. Paid leave counts. Annual, bereavement and parental leave are part of your work experience.
3. If your occupation is removed from the Green List after you started, your time still counts. INZ does not pull the ladder up behind you.

You can start counting work experience from any date on or after 29 September 2021.

The wage threshold

The “required pay rate” for your job is:

• the hourly rate specified for your Green List job, or
• the median wage — NZD $35.00 an hour since 9 March 2026 — if no rate is specified

Since 24 August 2026, the threshold is locked in: you must meet the rate in place when your 24 months start counting — or the rate on the day your work visa was granted, if you started work within 5 months of the grant — and then stay at or above that rate. You no longer face a re-test against a higher rate when you change employer, or in your current job on the day you apply for residence.

The classic trap — now closed. Before 24 August 2026, the threshold followed you: it had to be met when your 24 months started counting, again when you changed jobs, and again in your current job on the day you applied. People worked 24 months at the old median wage, never got a raise, and were declined because their current pay was below the application-day threshold. INZ’s own worked example: a slaughterer paid $31.61 since August 2024 applies in August 2026 when the median wage is $35.00 — declined, unless the employer raised the pay first.

Since 24 August 2026, this trap is closed. The wage rate is locked in at the rate in place when you started counting work experience. You no longer need to meet a higher rate when you change employer, and you no longer need to meet the increased rate on application day. A grace period also applies: if the rate rose between your work visa being granted and your first day of work, you can use the visa-grant-date rate, provided you started working within 5 months of the grant.

Your current job or job offer

At application date, the job (or offer) must be:

• full-time
• a Tier 2 Green List job
• paid at least the rate that applies to you under the locked-in wage rules above (the specified rate, or the median wage, in effect when you started counting)
• permanent, or fixed-term for at least 12 months from when you apply
• with an accredited employer under AEWV policy

Health, character and English

• Health: everyone aged 15+ included in the application needs a chest X-ray and medical examination, and the certificates must be less than 3 months old when INZ receives them. Details and panel physicians: NZ Visa Health Requirements Checklist.
• Character: police certificates from every country you are a citizen of, plus any country where you have spent 12+ months in the last 10 years. Certificates must be less than 6 months old when you apply.
• English: you must speak and understand English, proven through citizenship/study history or a test result no more than 2 years old. Your partner and children aged 16+ must also meet the requirement — or pay for English lessons in New Zealand.

Qualifications gained outside New Zealand

Some Green List jobs require a qualification. If yours was gained overseas, you may need an International Qualification Assessment (IQA) from NZQA before you apply — Washington and Sydney Accord qualifications are among the exceptions. Check early: IQAs take months.

Changing jobs during the 24 months

Changing employer does not reset your 24 months — but it can pause them.

Since 24 August 2026: changing employer no longer triggers a re-test against a higher rate. You keep counting at the rate that was locked in when you started. (Before that date, a job change meant meeting the rate in place at the moment you changed: INZ’s worked example had a worker who started at $34.11 facing $36.35 by the time they switched.)

Three job-change scenarios that stop the clock under any version of the rules:

• your work visa expires and you have no interim visa
• you move into a job that is not Tier 2 and not paid at 2× the median wage
• your pay drops below the required rate (the clock restarts when pay recovers)

The practical advice is unchanged: before you resign, confirm the new employer is accredited, the role is still Tier 2, and the pay clears the threshold that applies to you. A Variation of Conditions on your AEWV takes weeks — plan the gap so you are never working without the right visa conditions.

Fees and processing time

Item	Cost / time
Application fee	From NZD $6,450
Median processing time	42 working days (INZ data, last 4 weeks as of August 2026)
Chest X-ray + medical exam	Varies by country and clinic; budget a few hundred NZD per person
Police certificates	Varies by country; allow 4–8 weeks lead time in some jurisdictions
Certified translations	Required for every non-English document
IQA (if needed)	NZQA fee + weeks to months of lead time

Processing times move month to month — we track them in NZ Visa Processing Times.

How to apply, step by step

1. Confirm your occupation is Tier 2. Check the current Green List — tiers change, and the tier is fixed per occupation. Our Green List Checker does this in seconds.
2. Verify your 24 months. Map your work history against the 30-month window, the eligible-visa rule and the wage rule. Pull a summary of earnings from Inland Revenue (IRD) early — it is the cleanest evidence of 24 months of work.
3. Gather documents: passport, photo, employment agreements and job descriptions (previous and current), an employer letter describing role/hours/pay — especially if anything changed since your work visa — plus health, character and English evidence. Translate everything not in English, certified.
4. Apply online through your INZ account and pay the fee.
5. Keep a valid visa while you wait. If your current visa might expire during processing, apply for a further temporary visa — an interim visa will usually bridge you.
6. Respond fast to requests. INZ may ask for pay slips, bank statements or fresh police certificates; slow responses are the most common self-inflicted delay.

After the visa

A Work to Residence Visa is residence, full stop: you can work for any employer, study anywhere, and travel in and out freely for 2 years (your travel conditions). After holding residence for 2 years you can apply for a Permanent Resident Visa, which removes the travel expiry. Most people become eligible for citizenship after 5 years as a resident — you do not need the PRV first. The full walkthrough — conditions, fees and decision points at each stage — is in RV → PRV → citizenship: the complete timeline.

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Not sure whether WTR, Straight to Residence or the SMC points route fits you? The Pathway Finder maps your occupation, qualifications and timeline to a pathway in about 3 minutes. And if your occupation turns out to be Tier 1, read Work to Residence vs Straight to Residence before you plan around the 24 months.