The number of migrants entering New Zealand is set to decline as economic activity slows and the Government tightens visa rules for low income workers.
Net migration hit a record 140,000 in the year ended November 2023, up dramatically from a long-term average of less than 30,000 annually.
A sharp uptick in departures has brought down the net number, likely as the wave of migrants who arrived after the pandemic begin to leave, but arrivals remain strong.
During the pandemic, there were few arrivals or departures and net migration turned negative. But the economy was heating up and employers were calling out for workers.
When borders fully reopened in 2022, migrant arrivals climbed from about 3,000 each month to a peak of 24,700 in May 2023. As of January, arrivals had plateaued at just above 20,000
Unsustainable
Last Saturday, Minister of Immigration Erica Stanford announced she would tighten some work visa rules in response to this “unsustainable net migration”.
She has put forward a suite of changes to the Accredited Employer Worker Visa including introducing a language requirement and making employers advertise with Work and Income.
These changes were the start of a “more comprehensive work programme” which would create a smarter and more sustainable immigration system.
She has also signaled she will look to create a kind of long-term population plan that matches future growth with sufficient infrastructure investment.
On Wednesday, the Minister said she wasn’t able to estimate what impact the tighter work visa rules would have on the number of migrants entering New Zealand.
The primary goal of the policy was to shift the makeup of migrants to higher skill levels but it would have an impact on the total number as well.
“The number of low skilled migrants that have flooded into the country in the last year and a half has been significant, and I expect that that number will drop,” she said.
But it was too hard for her to even put a ballpark estimate on the magnitude of that drop.
Stanford said she asked the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for some modeling but the advice she received back was that it was “very, very difficult to determine”.
Policy choices were designed only to “knock off the peaks and troughs” as it was hard to control exact flows.
Migration flows tend to follow economic activity. The record net numbers coincided with both the border reopening and also the overheated domestic economy.
Stanford said migration numbers were tracking down with the wider slowdown and the rule changes would also help to knock off the peak.
Visa changes
The broad changes to the Accredited Employer Worker Visa are targeted at either lifting the skill level of migrants, or closing pathways that were opened for specific shortages.
For example, a long list of construction related roles are not being added to a green list as demand in that sector has slackened.
Workers in jobs such as earthmoving laborers, road traffic controllers, welders, fitter and turners, and linemarkers will no longer be put on a fast-track to residency.
Applications in low skill categories would need a certain level of English language and prospective employers would have to first look to Work and Income for a candidate.
The maximum stay would drop from five years to three and general skill level thresholds would be lifted for most roles.
Stanford said having an English language requirement would help migrants be able to understand their rights and more easily raise concerns about abusive employers.
A work to residency pathway for bus and truck drivers has been closed to new applicants as the shortage has now been filled, according to the Minister.
Transporting New Zealand, the lobby group for road freight transport companies, criticized this decision, saying the industry was still in a “fierce international competition for migrant drivers”.
"Keeping the pathway open for at least 12 months rather than closing it after only seven months of operation would have allowed the sector a more adequate time period to address long-term skills shortages," interim chief executive Dom Kalasih said.
But Kirk Hope, chief executive of business lobby group BusinessNZ, endorsed the changes, saying it was sensible to ensure immigration settings were aligned with current economic conditions.
"The immigration system needs to recognise international skills are needed at all levels and be responsive to labour market conditions. Companies are reporting more local people are applying to take up the jobs available,” he said.
56 Comments
A colleague's brother was all set to arrive in May, but has since changed their mind due to IT job ads diminishing rapidly.. the thought of moving their family in an uncertain environment wasn't worth it..
Migration will slow quite a bit, as folks are still moving across the ditch
100% agree. We're bringing economic refugees in unsustainable numbers who don't have much to offer but a lot to gain from NZ.
Also, living standards here may be plummeting rapidly for low-income households but are much better compared to the source countries of NZ's low-skilled migration. So, they will likely stay put for as long as they can.
Not all gain that much.
We know some who leave NZ after getting sucked into the rout.
The new immigrants or language students often come with the promise of the golden land, a great employment opportunity, a great education or the ability to earn more than they spend to support their family in their homeland.
Often false hopes and they are screwed.
Often they pay extortionist fees to get a work Visa, or paid the minimum wage or less, or pay extortionist fees for their language course and temporary visa or pay extortionist fees to get a sponsor and job.
Some lose their job or are made redundant and\or cannot get a renewel of their temporary work visa and\or just leave as the golden land is not as promised.
These new immigrants that are often taken advantage of in NZ and outside NZ (with payment of fees to get their work visa) need protection not vilifying!
Is that not the point of having an english language requirement and a higher level of skill and knowledge to achieve the visa? This would mean less lower skilled migrants with less language skills getting taken advantage of. I wholeheartedly agree there needs to be protection, and there are some horrible employers amongst the good ones, but we allow this to happen not only form the employers themselves, but from the calibre of immigrants we allow through the gates as well.
Agree completely. Immigration should not be a source of cheap labor. National\immigration should be setting tighter controls and immigration criteria. then policing them and putting in measures in so immigrants and potential immigrants who come are not fleeced or taken advantage of.
Only hosp? Tourism, agriculture, retail, transport/trucking, construction, etc. are all in favour of unsustainable migration levels to keep a squeeze on their wage bills. All those together represent a majority of our economic sectors by GDP and, more importantly, billions in party funding and lobbying budgets.
Labour unions have also called for more low-value migration into NZ for several years now.
Net migration numbers will likely fall off a cliff due to:
Govt tightening criteria for new immigrants,
Softening economy increasing unemployment and areas with shortages of workers starting to fill as numbers of people looking for employment increases and considering a wider range of vacancies in order to get work.
Companies letting temporary and permanent workers go as the economy slows,
Word of mouth overseas as word spreads that NZ is no a place of getting work easily and property and living costs are proportionally too high compared to other option,
more leave to try out the "lucky country" nearby.
Would not be surprised to see net migration trending towards zero or going negative within 12 months.
Time will tell.
Agree completely, National will eventually try and bolster net migration once the tide turns. If it starts trending down and looks like net migration may eventually fall to 5,000 per month or lower they will do all they can to turn the tap back on. The zero percent annual GDP number we are currently heading for would look much worse than the approx, -2% if there had been no population gain of around that amount.
Historically migration goes in cycles. If the net migration numbers are dropping, its like the tide, very hard to turn around at it's midpoint. Especially if NZ goes out of favor for a period in the countries that we source our immigrants from.
But even the most enthusiastic National supporter will have children and grandchildren who are unable to afford decent accomodation in our cities. An average halving of house prices who be good for most Kiwis and bad just for a small minority of property investors. If National want to be re-electd they should promise staionary house prices and a drop of no more than 10% on average. Tweak all the rules and policies to achieve it.
I'm a millionaire house owner with a clutch of working adult children all renting. I'd vote to be a non-millionaire in the same house with all my working children buying.
Halving is definitely not good for Kiwis that are first home buyers and bought in the last two years with 10-20 percent deposit. That would likely result in a few jumpers!!
Investors are likely to be more able to face a big price drop but recent first home buyers are not.
Agreed. She is the closest thing we’ve had to a MP uttering the words Population Plan, we’ve had in a long time. Also sounds like she knows her stuff when interviewed. A bit right for my liking, and keeps pretty terrible company, but she’s on the right track, hopefully keeps going with this.
The Queensland government has increased the minimum pay for the average construction worker on civil projects to more than $200,000 a year and extended its coverage to more works.
The Miles government’s latest Best Practice Industry Conditions for transport will cover rail and road projects worth up to $890 million where it requires contractors pay CW5 construction workers $191,086 a year and up to $201,694 when counting income protection and redundancy fund pay, an industry analysis found.
No wonder NZers going west
You're doing us down a little there - Australia are 10th in the GDP per capita ratings while NZ is a still-respectable 22nd. Australia is about 30% higher than us. We are at a similar level to wealthy nations such as France and the UK. Most of the countries above us are European (going against common narratives about that continent).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_ca…
"" 'The number of low skilled migrants that have flooded into the country in the last year and a half has been significant, and I expect that that number will drop,' she said. But it was too hard for her to even put a ballpark estimate on the magnitude of that drop. Stanford said she asked the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for some modeling but the advice she received back was that it was 'very, very difficult to determine'. ""
Simple. Match work visa with IRD number and report on income. Other countries do it. Years ago when there was a report of two immigrants arrested for smuggling drugs it was revealed they had lived in NZ for nine years and never paid any income tax. I asked my MP to match tax paid with work and residency visa and was told it couldn't be done because of 'privacy'.
This is an interesting one as the likes of StatsNZ have the ability to pluck information form other govt departments, but each dept are silo'd in their own right, needing negotiated and iron -clad information sharing agreements to be able to obtain and use information form each other. One example of such is how DIA can access immigration data for citizenship applications, allowing applicants to apply online vs paper and in person, thus creating large efficiencies. The flipside however to this, is that if all govt departments operated openly then there would be the potential for abuse of systems from within and the data could be used by parliament in nefarious ways should they have the inkling to do so. Where the perfect balance is, I don't know, but if there is significant public interest which warrant these agreements proceeding for the public good then it could eventuate one day.
There already is a complete dataset of all Govt information linking everything. It is accessable via a detailed use case via Government Information Services, and when I last used it, it required direct access. i.e. is not available online. Obviously queries are vetted and data is aggregated to quite a high level, so not exactly snoopable, but results can be very "insightful"
Most depts obviously have more detailed access as part of their BAU remit - but they can't use it contrary to the particular purpose they are tasked with. Which creates some interesting conflicts, as often they can see an issue, but are not allowed to report, investigate, or act on said issue.
Personally I am torn on how controlled it is. I am a firm believer in information freedom. But, also appreciate just how easily this data could be abused. I mean, most of the tinfoil hats out there wouldn't even comprehend just how comprehensive it is.
All you need to do is to require each immigrant to submit a copy of their tax return to Immigration each year as a condition of their visa being renewed. Then you can immediately who is being underpaid, who is not genuinely working, and who is not working in their approved visa employer/job/area.
It's not that simple.
There have been cases where people were paid a higher wage but had to pay back some of it to their employer in form of rent or other expenses. Also plenty of cases where income received vs actually paid (in cash) was different to meet immigration thresholds.
RBNZ already has access to much of this information, and probably more with their new systems. Not sure how easy it is to transfer this information between departments.
Shame about the cuts to government departments - no-one is going to be queueing up to take on more work at the moment.
They mention immigration rules but how can there have been any adhered to when they are processing 20000 a month? That’s 925 a day. How on earth can they back check that every day. And that’s net numbers not gross of which I think was almost twice. So conservatively 1500 visa applications processed a day? Does anyone know how many immigration officers there are ?
They don't bother checking, https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/immigration/132853434/shambles-of-our-…
So apparently we are importing 15,000 less skilled workers a year than we did in 2017. So despite record immigration numbers, we still have a major skills shortage. Talk about a complete disaster!
In addition to the complete hash that Labour made of our immigration rules, Jacinda Ardern once again demonstrated that she had no insight into the consequences of her "be kind" policies. One of the main reasons why so many unskilled workers have been imported is because she gifted Permanent Residency to 210,000 unskilled temporary workers who just so happened to be in the country when the borders closed during covid. All of these workers, suddenly freed from their visa restrictions, all left their jobs that they had been brought in to do, and promptly went and got better jobs during the covid labour shortage (also displacing Kiwi workers who then ended up on JobSeeker), or moved from their regional visa job to Auckland and became another Uber driver or domestic house cleaner. Thus we ended up with 210,000 unskilled jobs that needed immediately refilling. And so here we are ....
"She has also signaled she will look to create a kind of long-term population plan that matches future growth with sufficient infrastructure investment."
About time.
Trouble is that the issue is now. We still have a massive housing deficit and can't build them fast enough. The current massive immigration rate is just making it worse.
Because we could not possibly train waitresses in NZ to pick up dirty plates and listen to a single sentence of a customer merely stating an item on a prerecorded menu of options.
Yep those essential high skills that enable them to a below living wage pay and hostel or worse accommodation levels in the area.
Sure, now what should we call the new labour hire company to bring in 30-50 people with no skills, get deposits from them and crowd them into a rental at 6 to a room they pay inflated rates for. Don't worry if you don't have the jobs lined up yet, a couple of job ads is enough evidence (although a picture of a cat licking its own ass is attached evidence enough for our immigration dept : "don't check any attachments you have no time or productivity graded on that").
Hm How about Tams for : Totally a Migrant Scam, or Scam : Seduce Candidates Applying for Migration
Bets are on if the immigration dept will pick up on it. I give them worse then even odds.
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