New Zealand Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) Explained

A quick but important note before anything else: the AEWV's basic structure — three sequential steps of employer accreditation, job check, and visa application — has been in place since it was introduced starting in 2022, but the specific settings inside it, including wage thresholds, visa fees, and processing times, are reviewed and updated by Immigration New Zealand from time to time. This article explains how the system fits together structurally. It does not state a current wage threshold, a current visa fee, or a current processing time as fixed fact, because none of those can be responsibly quoted without checking current guidance. Always confirm live figures directly on immigration.govt.nz before any of this informs a case plan.

For a consultancy handling New Zealand-bound clients on employer-sponsored temporary work visas, the AEWV is often the first thing that needs explaining clearly to both the employer and the migrant, because it is not a single application the way many other work visas are — it is a sequence of three separate checks, each with its own requirements, and each generally needing to be cleared before the next can proceed. Understanding that structure — what each step actually checks, why the system was built this way, and where the genuinely current numbers need to come from — is what lets a consultancy set an accurate expectation with a client, instead of treating the AEWV as a single form to fill in.

What the AEWV replaced

The Accredited Employer Work Visa was introduced starting in 2022, restructuring employer-sponsored temporary work in New Zealand around a three-step accreditation model. Before it, employer-sponsored temporary work ran through a patchwork of older categories, including the Essential Skills Work Visa, each with its own process and requirements. The AEWV consolidated that patchwork into one framework, so that instead of choosing among several parallel visa types, an employer and migrant now generally work through the same three-step sequence regardless of which specific role is involved.

The three-step structure, in sequence

The AEWV system is built on three checks that generally have to happen in order — an employer-level check, a job-level check, and finally an individual visa application:

Because these three steps are sequential rather than parallel, a consultancy advising an employer for the first time is often really managing two separate timelines back to back — getting the employer through accreditation, and then getting a specific role through the job check — before an individual migrant's visa application can even be lodged. Treating the AEWV as "one application" tends to understate how much of the process sits upstream of the migrant's own paperwork.

Wage thresholds, sector settings, and why this article does not quote a number

Beyond the three-step sequence itself, New Zealand has attached wage thresholds and sector-specific settings to parts of this framework — most notably, different treatment for roles that sit above or below a median-wage benchmark, and separate settings that apply to some sectors and regions. These settings affect what the job check actually requires for a given role, which is part of why the job check step cannot be reduced to a single fixed checklist across every job:

We deliberately do not state a specific current wage threshold, a specific current visa fee, or a specific current processing time anywhere in this article, because Immigration New Zealand updates these periodically and a figure stated today would very likely be stale by the time a client reads it. The only reliable source for a current figure is immigration.govt.nz, checked at the time advice is given — not a number carried over from a previous case file or a client's earlier application.

Why the visa is generally tied to one employer and one job

Because the visa application step references an already-approved job check at an already-accredited employer, an AEWV is generally tied to that specific employer and that specific approved role, rather than functioning as a general-purpose, portable work permit. A change of employer generally means going through a new process — a new job check at minimum, and potentially a new employer accreditation if the new employer is not already accredited — rather than the existing visa simply carrying over. The exact conditions that apply to any individual case, including what options exist while a change of employer is in progress, need to be checked against current Immigration New Zealand guidance rather than assumed from how the system has worked in the past.

How the AEWV job check interacts with the Green List

The job check step does not treat every occupation identically. Roles on New Zealand's Green List — occupations Immigration New Zealand has assessed as facing genuine, ongoing skill shortages — generally receive different treatment within the wider system, and our New Zealand Green List occupations explainer covers how its Work to Residence pathway typically runs through a period of skilled work under an Accredited Employer Work Visa before residence eligibility opens up. This article deliberately does not restate the specifics of which occupations sit on the Green List or exactly how each pathway is structured, since those details are covered there and are themselves subject to change — the general point relevant here is simply that a role's Green List status can affect how the job check step of the AEWV framework applies to it.

What a consultancy can actually control

Since the current wage thresholds, visa fees, processing times, and sector-specific settings all sit outside a consultancy's control and move on Immigration New Zealand's own schedule, the practical value a consultancy adds is in sequencing the three steps correctly for each client, keeping an accredited employer's status and each job check current rather than assumed, and confirming the latest settings before quoting anything specific to an employer or migrant. Our New Zealand visa consultant software page covers how VisaBOS keeps an employer's accreditation status, each job check, and each linked migrant's visa application on one case record, so a consultancy can track where a client sits in the three-step sequence without re-deriving it from memory each time — though it is a case-management tool, not a source of current wage thresholds or fees, so it does not replace checking immigration.govt.nz directly.

To be direct about the one thing this article will not do: it will not state a current wage threshold, a specific current visa fee, or a specific current processing time, because all three are set or reviewed on a schedule outside this article's control and have changed before. Confirm all of them against current Immigration New Zealand guidance before quoting a client anything specific.

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