Is your business eligible for the two-week wage subsidy extension?

The Government's second round of the wage subsidy, put in place to protect jobs and support businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, is opening for applicants today.

The new wage subsidy was announced after a new Covid-19 outbreak forced Auckland back into Alert Level 3, and the rest of the country into Level 2, for two weeks.

Cabinet Ministers are meeting to review the lockdown today.

Eligible businesses can apply for a two-week wage subsidy of up to $1171.60 per worker on the Ministry of Social Development's website from 1pm today.

The new wage subsidy and the current wage subsidy extension – which is open for new applications until September 1 – is expected to support about 930,000 jobs. The packages have so far paid $13.2 billion to businesses to protect more than 1.7 million jobs.

"The wage subsidy has protected more than 1.7 million jobs and we know it works. That's why we moved quickly to introduce the new wage subsidy to support businesses for the two weeks Auckland is at Alert Level 3," Finance Minister Grant Robertson said.

To be eligible for the new subsidy, a business must have experienced, or is projected to experience, a 40 per cent revenue drop across a 14-day period between August 12 and September 10 when compared to a similar period last year.

Under the two-week payment:

The wage subsidy is available to businesses throughout New Zealand.

Meanwhile, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni said changes to the COVID Leave Support Scheme also come into effect from today.

"We've simplified the Leave Support Scheme by removing the revenue and ‘negatively impacted’ tests as part of our work to reduce barriers to people getting tested for Covid-19, including fears that a positive result would put their employment at risk or that they wouldn’t receive income while they couldn’t work because they had used up their sick leave," she said.