Stand-down periods

Most weekly benefits have a stand-down.

This is a period of time where you can't get any money from us. It's usually 1 or 2 weeks after your application is approved.

Example

• Your application is approved from Monday 11 May 2026
• You have a 2 week stand-down period
• Your payments start from Monday 25 May 2026.

When your payments start

Your payments will start from the date after your stand-down finishes. If you've been working recently, your payments may take longer to start, it depends on your situation.

Once your payments start, you won't get any money in the first week. This is because we pay you for the week that's just been. This is called arrears.

How payments work

If you've left your job without a good reason or you've been fired for misconduct, you may still need to wait up to 13 weeks before your payments start.

This 13 week period is a non-entitlement period, not a stand-down.

Fired for misconduct or leaving voluntarily

Redundancy pay

If you're made redundant and get redundancy pay, you'll have a stand-down of 1 or 2 weeks. It depends how much your redundancy pay is.

The stand-down period for redundancy pay has changed over time. If you've had a redundancy payment, you can ask us to check if we treated this correctly when working out your stand-down period.

When you don't have a stand-down

You won't have a stand-down if:

• you transfer from one benefit to another
• your benefit is suspended and then resumed again
• your benefit is cancelled because you find a job and then you go back on a benefit within 26 weeks.

You also won't have a stand-down if you get New Zealand Superannuation or Veteran's Pension.

Work out how long your stand-down is

How long your stand-down is depends on:

• your average weekly income (before tax) in the last 26 or 52 weeks, and
• the number of children you have.

If you have a partner, we'll base the stand-down on whoever has the highest income in the last 26 or 52 weeks. We'll only use one income to work out the stand-down period.