The estimated population gain from migration slumped dramatically to under 1000 in December.
Statistics NZ estimates New Zealand's population increase from migration was just 976 in December last year, down from 4216 (-77%) in December 2023, and 9025 (-89%) in December 2022.
Leaving aside the period from April 2020 to June 2022, in which migration patterns were seriously disrupted by pandemic travel restrictions, the December 2024 net migration gain was the lowest for that month since December 2012.
There was little change in the travel patterns of NZ citizens in December 2024 compared to December 2023.
An estimated 3337 NZ citizens arrived back in the country after an extended stay overseas in December 2024, compared to 3008 in December 2023.
Conversely, 6453 NZ citizens left long-term in December 2024 compared to 6605 in December 2023. That meant a net loss of 3116 NZ citizens in December 2024 compared to a net loss of 3597 NZ citizens in December 2023.
However, there were some big changes in the migration patterns for non-NZ citizens in December.
The number of non-NZ citizens arriving long-term dropped from 12,078 in December 2023 to 10,449 in December 2024 (-13.5%). Meanwhile, the estimated number of non-NZ citizens who departed long-term increased from 4264 in December 2023 to 6357 in December 2024 (+49%).
That meant there was a net loss of 3116 NZ citizens in December 2024, and a net gain 4092 citizens of other countries, giving a total net gain of 974 for the month.
Net long term migration
Select chart tabs
114 Comments
One gets the impression that a rather than holding the younger generations up by their ankles and shaking them down to fleece them of their wealth, a better economic policy approach may have been in order. One that rewards people for productive enterprise while making NZ a reasonably affordable place to live.
Trump-Musk are turning the US to a massive business - one that is rapidly sucking up all the best global talent (particularly Ai and space developers), doing deals to buy the rights to other countries valuable resources.
The USA is directing the profits of this enterprise directly to their elite (darwinism accelerated) via corporations, all this whilst smashing their national operating costs (DOGE) and making their economy fire at the expense of all others.... and with a huge AI military spend that will defend the elite as they build their walled cities.
We (and most of the rest of the world) will not even see it happening til its too late to react. NZ needs to wake up and develop its own national business strategy or become a farm and spaceport to serve the USA.
This may be Trumps and Musks wet dream but it ain't going to happen.
Both of them are not concerned with facts & reality and albeit our understanding of the laws of physics can be bend somewhat (like landing rocket boosters on drone ships) they will achieve the exact opposite and crash America's economy and global power.
True power doesn't lie in dominating everybody else through fear and intimidation but to build strong alliances and a cohesive & collaborative society which desires to build, invent, create and share prosperity.
There is one here by citizenship if that's what you mean: https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/net-migration-falls-in-2024/
The next crisis will be for those who borrowed during ultra-low rates.
I need to check how many central banks are still cutting their balance sheets. The Fed is still planning to reverse what it printed during the pandemic:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/feds-powell-sees-ways-go-shrinking-f…
Yep, but we’re a tad more f*^ked I reckon Kraker, our team need to tread carefully…I understand the hate you, & a lot of others on here have for the “ponzi”, but cheering for the death of property & cheering for the death of NZ Inc shouldn’t be the same thing.
I’m seriously lost on how helpful house prices at 4-to-1 income ratios will be if we have no jobs, I’m not sure on the fix…but I reckon aiming for a long period of keeping house prices flat while getting incomes growing surely has to be the goal…or f*^k it, let’s torch this b*tch to the ground ☄️🔥🫡😂
We'll be choosing to sacrifice younger generations for 30-40 years if we take the approach of throwing more taxpayer money and policy at holding prices up until incomes catch up. It's a pretty raw deal, this new Muldoonism of price protection.
In previous market crashes (e.g. shares) there have been rough times for some years, but new shoots and new more productive enterprises afterward as people refocus on things that aren't pure speculation.
House prices at 4-to-1 or say $250,000 for a 2 or 3 bedroom decent place in Auckland would be great for our economy. Why dash to Australia or London to spend half your income on rent when you can invest in your own place in beautiful NZ. Those kind of prices would reduce rents by at least half so working Kiwis would have more to spend. Spending in NZ equates to more new jobs. Also the chance to start new businesses - low property costs are a bonus for entrepreneurs.
I'll declare self interest - four adult children and one is already in Australia. The other three are talented, hard working, above average wages but with not even a dream of buying in NZ. Kill hopuse prices and I'll be much poorer but seeing my kids in their own homes would make me happier.
House prices are too high - kids are forced by finance to live with parents and then pushed overseas to earn more. Return to the time when manual labourers bought their own homes and usually had one income and a partner at home with the kids.
The average mortgage is somewhere around $400K and you think the cutting their home value down to a quarter would be good for the economy?
this would result is the majority of the country foreclosing on their loans and economic destruction.
What do you think will happen to all those people who loose hundreds of thousands of dollars? do you think they will want to stay in New Zealand?
oh but at least YOUR children could afford a house. what about other peoples children that have houses and will not after the banks take it from them?
i think your view is very selfish
I will probably be buying before we see 75% drops from here Rookie... I do not think that your doomsday will occur
average AUCKLAND house is 1mil its not going to 250... but it could easily drop into the 700s from here.
you can do a cashflow for a rental but the houses at the 1.8mil mark, its all about what money the buyer has.... there is no way 1.8mil stacks up at 4-5% as a viable rental. at 4% you would need almost a $1600 per week rent?
you do not get much for 1.8 in akl
Getting rid of the silly MDRS restrictions imposed by Luxon/Seymour would mean:
1. The values of the land under existing houses would increase (good news for current owners).
2. The per unit cost of new houses reduced as 8 new houses get built where one used to sit (good news for prospective owners).
Both the present and the future would benefit, but we are governed very poorly.
In North Shore 8 new town houses replacing a single house is common. With luck they are better houses - better insulation, better electricity, more than the single toilet, fancy kitchen, etc. However I live in the 1960's stand alone weatherboard house and much as I like my neighbours having them out of sight and generally out of earshot is how we prefer it. Having a garden and room to park several vehicles is a positive. I'd never buy a garden gnome but at least that is my choice.
Overly dramatic post. Many are mortgage free and would not foreclose on anything, plus no losses occur unless the house sells. We also have a pension system which disregards any assets and is supposed to allow a basic standard of living so not having a reverse mortgage opportunity simplu means less luxuries in old age.
I think your view is based on your vested interest in wanting to be a property investor and is more so at the benefit to yourself than the benefit of NZ’s children and their children.
Society is better off having families close for support and for communities to thrive. Think of the additional costs to the healthcare sector and ACC if more and more oldies have no kids around for natural supports as well, placing further costs on future generations.
1/3 of the country have a mortgage? What would happen to the banks if half their lending books went into negative equity? do you think it would be good for the economy?
I think your view is based on your vested interest in wanting to be a property investor and is more so at the benefit to yourself than the benefit of NZ’s children and their children.
I think you're making assumptions here, right my name is RI but i invest in other assets aside from being a FHB.
sure i agree with the premise of having more children and those children being able to afford houses, but there are other ways of doing that rather than crashing house prices to 25%
Many keep their mortgages from bein discharged to have access to revolving credit, and the fact that someone's house may drop in value to lower than the price they have paid is not the end of the world, it simply mean that their ingrained cultural belief of never ending increases based on the last 35 years is flawed and showing recency bias. They would still have the asset, irrespective of money, and be able to shelter themselves and go about their lives as per usual. If they sold for a loss ten theybuy into the same market, so it is again relative.
What would happen to the economy on that path down…you say “I’ll be much poorer”, yep, as with the other 66% of NZ’ers who own houses. I’m not cheering for property, but I’m lost on how this works out…do the 34% prop up the economy? Where does the economy grow? Someone offers $251K…how do you cap this, or once your kids have brought are happy for the cycle to ramp up again?
I get it, I’ve got kids too, but surely improving incomes to improve affordability beats smashing property down, clearly I’m missing some basic fundamentals here.
other 66% of NZ’ers who own houses
They'll still own their property. From what I gather you're suggesting that if one person buys a house for $1M and at a later date someone else buys a very similar house next door for $250K they should be instead made to pay $1M because the first person got a really bad deal.
How does that make anyone richer (other than the banks?
Nope…I’m saying for the 66% they would have negative equity up the wahzoo (from their on doing, yep) which would then leave them to sell & crystallise that loss or hold but have a few decades getting back into a positive position…either way it would take a lot of $$ out of the economy…creating carnage…maybe…not sure, can’t imagine it’ll be rainbow’s & lollipops however 😂
Because in the scenario I gave the person who paid $1M lost that money when they overpaid. It's a sunk cost, they lost the money the moment they gambled on house prices going up (or if they think it was a fair price and they were happy to pay it no harm done)
If the house next door is now selling for $250 then an engineer/doctor/teacher might decide to stay as they do not need to spend as much money on housing and thus the lower salaries compared to OZ become more attractive.
Person 1 is still f***Ed as they always were going to be. Person 2 is much better off and so is NZ.
Yep, I get that & agree those who buy at $250K will be happy…I’m asking what happens to the economy on the path to your scenario…let’s say over the next 24 months house prices fall a further 72% (gets us to that $250K)…what happens…do you think it won’t have any negative impact?
If course there will be a negative impact. There was always going to be a negative impact once house prices got out of control. There is no soft landing. We borrowed shit loads on money from Australian banks to go to the pokies and now we're going to have to pay it back. Borrowing more at a slower rate is not going to help. There is no path that doesn't result in negative outcomes.
The sooner the full crash plays out the sooner a reset is possible. The bigger the crash the less likely the same situation will repeat again in the near future.
Love the pokies analogy…always gamble the feature! 😂
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, I think the negative outcomes would be catastrophic, and I’m not sure NZ Inc would recover.
I’ve enjoyed the chat though, nice to keep it civil & express ones views 🤝🤝🤝
The problem is that person 1 now owes the bank 750K for nothing. Person 1 now declares themself bankrupt. The bank can only recoup 250k from what they've paid. This would be happening everywhere. Bank gets into trouble and goes under.
Person 2 (me) is sensibly sat on a large deposit biding time to buy. Now lose all deposit as bank holding fails. Nobody has any spare capital. Deflation occurs.
I'm all for more reasonable house prices, in fact I'm expecting and waiting for it. But a major crash would not be a good outcome. Further moderate falls and a period of stagnation against wage increases is the answer..!
Its an interesting perspective
I know a few of us over here in Brisbane who a relatively young early 40’s who all own houses mortgage free
We view our house as a home, not an investment. We all agree a material drop in house prices is a good thing, and I would actually be happy if they did, because none of us live for the misery of our children or anyone elses.
If it fell in price, cool, the next house purchase would also be cheaper, if it rises, it screws our kid’s generation from owning or directing resources to productive enterprise.
How does a drop in home prices negatively impact the economy? I would argue high house prices add no real wealth to homeowners and just force more income to be directed away from the economy towards just having a place to live in for younger people.
When you basically now need rich home owning parents to afford a reasonable house, the system is broken.
I actually think it’s the central banks that’ll torch it to the ground, under the narrative of, deglobalisation, supply chain disruptions, tariffs, inflation, and reduced government spending. We’ve had many elections shift power from the left cheek to the right cheek of the same arse. The right will push austerity while central banks cut liquidity. Deflationary bust for assets.
but I reckon aiming for a long period of keeping house prices flat while getting incomes growing surely has to be the goal
as a sane market participant I would immediately sell and invest elsewhere for the required 20-30 years, those sellers causing the same falls that happen in a crash, its like the bond market,. its like the bond market , you could hold till maturity or take a haircut now and find something else to invest in....
in fact we are starting to see that now, but buyers are not playing ball, and sellers are pretending that listings are not piling up...
"... NZ isn't the greatest place currently."
That may be so, but when NZ citizenship opens the door to Australia and other economies offering greater earnings potential for the go-getters, you can put up with the present downsides of life in the Land of the Wrong White Crowd.
The rental markets going to be cooked with all these new build townhouses and no migrants to rent them. There was a commentator on her who mentioned the trend of net migration was going to possibly turn negative this year based on the forecast data. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
NZ could become 'net exporter' of population
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/top/540471/nz-could-become-net-exporter-of-p…
Yes Q1-2 was what I remembered their general argument being. Let’s be real here, NZ relies on net migration to continue a growth economy. We are already seeing per capita metrics declining so if net migration goes negative, the economy is toast. The last of the boomers retirement plans do kind of hinge on being able to offload their properties at a good capital gain or have tenants rent for the cash flow. If either go south, it could get ugly fast. You can see why the chat of overseas investment is building up as the credit creation domestically won’t sustain it.
this is actually a serious question - I became a kiwi citizen a couple of years ago. At my citizenship ceremony i overhead a couple of people talking about how now they had their NZ citizenship they were off over to Australia. We often think that those kiwis heading across the ditch are all born here but in reality there would be a number of migrants using NZ as a stepping stone to get into Australia.
Most of my honours engineering courses had 6-8 students. The comp sci ones occasionally had more. None of them were imports.
The cyber security ones, however, were 30+ and nearly all international students (I think only 2 of us were kiwis, from memory).
And as someone who dedicated a whole year to my thesis, I cannot say how much I detest the taught Masters international student money-grab that devalued my qualification 😡
If they have kids in Oz then their kids become a NZ citizen by descent also, they simply have to register the citizenship and get them a passport with one simple form. This only goes one generation however, so if those kids then had kids in Oz they could not pass their NZ Citizenship (by descent) to their kids.
any NZ citizen's offspring will also be a NZ citizen
Factually incorrect. If a child is born overseas and has one parent who is a citizen by grant or by birth then that child is a citizen by descent, however this child cannot pass this to their children as they did not obtain it by birth or grant. They can apply but it doesn't get granted often. I used to work at DIA and it astounded me the amount of NZ citizens in this predicament. Born in Oz, had to fly to NZ at short notice for a funeral, only to find their own young child cannot get NZ citizenship and a passport through them as the parents were a citizen by descent.
See here
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/losing-our-young-people-new-stats-r…
Looks like the evidence supports the anecdata supplied by people here that it is young people leaving. As I've said before, my firm has lost over a third of the qualified but more junior staff. They left because they saw National undoing the good housing and transport stuff (to be fair that is the industry we work in so they would have been more attuned to it) that had started under National previously and continued under Labour. No faith in the NACTNZF leadership.
You think that Labour did a good job with housing?
Are you serious, they set the country back decades with mismanagement of the whole economy.
As for leaving to go to Australia, things are financially harder on people there.
Currently in Oz on holiday and I can assure you that cost of living is higher in the cities.
They have more issues than Nz does and with current government they nave no show of improving things.
Two quick points.
National proposed many policies that were clearly to help property investors and some against renters. It was pretty much: "We are here for those older and already wealthy"
Of course the cost of living is more in Australian cities (mainly just rental costs)- but Kiwis will usually still have much more left at the end of the month considering their incomes. This is what matters.
A few have come back to visit and I'm in touch with the rest. This is exactly what they are saying (Oz, Europe and Canada), they are actually making it sound pretty tempting.
Like I've said before they are qualified and talented young professionals, they're not going over and flipping burgers. I have no idea whether low qualified jobs work out better, judging by recent articles on stop-go roles I suspect it may also work out better.
Yeah sort of agree with you theman, but the evidence of the people I know who have moved to Aus is they have achieved a lot more than if they had stayed here.
I know of some who have sold up upon retirement and moved to Aus and claim it was their best ever decision.
Edit. Just to be clear, we have no intention of leaving NZ. Awesome place to live even if one has not a lot.
No idea what you're on about.
Maybe take a break from the forum, it doesn't seem to be doing your mental health any good.
I say this without any hint of malice, I've found myself getting pretty angry on here sometimes and decided to take a break, it helped. Stay well.
What is the sum of actual border crossings in the period?
Edit: the actual net border crossings in December was +12,831 arrivals. So seasonal adjustments and guesses as to who was a long term departure are doing some heavy lifting.
And January is even worse; over the December January period there is a net gain of ~40,000 people. 1.38m arrived, 1.34m departed.
Border crossings for Feb24 to Jan 25 inclusive are a net gain of 22,671.
I charted and compared the full data from the stats press release page. 2024 is very similar to 2018 and 2019, and yes, its goes more negative than 2023 in March April and May, but otherwise very similar.
Fyi 2018 and 2019 had net migration of 50k and 70k, so not the insanity of 120k of 2023, but still significant and way higher than it should be.
Both are unrelated to one another, the infrastructure deficit we suffer is not caused by immigration but decades of under investment.
If it wasn't for the idiotic govt of the day, we would have had some chance on catching up on infrastructure like consolidated water entities, better sea link between North & South island and lots of other upgrades like hospitals and modernised schools.
Sadly, big tax cuts for the rich and few scraps for bottom feeders won.
Good readership, let's ponder how anesthetized the cavalry has become to mass movement of its Citizens.
Here I reside in beautiful QLD where similar age parents lament their kids moving to the Sunshine Coast, all of 1.5hrs drive Thursday afternoon peak hour traffic.
Over my many years in health dealing with elderly I loss count of the sadness of the elderly whose kids has all flown the coup and country.
Wave after wave of political snakery makes no difference, at least as far as I can ascertain.
So my challenge is, given this cohort of readers (and token trolls) are financially savvy, what can really be done to turn the tide?
And even more importantly, CAN it be done?
Because, I'm stumped. Completely.
It is the end… this place don’t let people save money … they steal everything from workers and pay themselves hugely and spend on funny projects to create jobs to fit people in elite classes. So far every thing was made by creating debts on immigrants and making them work for free.
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.