Migrants are continuing to flood into the country, with the biggest net gain of immigrants for over 10 years recorded in January.
Statistics New Zealand said the country had a seasonally adjusted net gain (more arrivals than departures) of 3100 migrants in January 2014. This was the highest gain since the 3400 recorded in May 2003.
And the continuing inflow means that New Zealand had a net gain of 25,700 migrants in the year to January, which is the biggest 12-month inflow since the April 2004 year, when the figure was also 25,700.
If you add up the seasonally-adjusted net inflows in the past four months this gives an average gain of 2922 people a month. If such a rate were to be maintained this year we would be looking at annual increases in the order of 35,000 people, which is starting to get up toward historic highs.
A large proportion of migrants tend to settle in the country's largest city Auckland, so the growing inflows might be expected to put further pressure on Auckland's constrained housing market and its house prices.
The strong gains in net migration are coming principally because more Kiwis are staying at home and not crossing the ditch to Australia, but there are also increasing numbers of people coming in from overseas as well.
Stats NZ said net migration had been positive and mostly increasing since September 2012.
In the January 2014 year, migrant arrivals numbered 95,200, and migrant departures numbered 69,500, resulting in the net gain of 25,700 migrants. This compares with net migration of zero in the January 2013 year.
In the latest year, New Zealand had a net loss of 17,100 migrants to Australia, well down from 37,900 a year earlier. Net gains were recorded from most other countries, led by the United Kingdom (6,000), China (5,700), and India (5,600).
In detailed crunching of the numbers, Stats NZ said unadjusted figures showed that 95,200 migrants arrived in the January 2014 year, up 11% from the January 2013 year (85,700).
Migrant departures numbered 69,500, down 19% from the previous year (85,600). This resulted in the net gain of 25,700 migrants in the January 2014 year, compared with net migration of zero in the January 2013 year.
The highest net inflow ever recorded was 42,500 in the May 2003 year. The highest net outflow was 43,600 in the July 1979 year. Over the last 20 years (December 1994–2013 years), New Zealand's annual net inflow of migrants has averaged 11,700.
The net loss of 17,100 people to Australia in the January 2014 year was well down from the loss of 37,900 in the January 2013 year. The latest year's loss resulted from 37,200 departures to Australia (down from 53,100 in the January 2013 year), partly offset by 20,100 arrivals (up from 15,100). In both directions, most migrants were New Zealand citizens.
There were net gains of migrants from most other countries in the January 2014 year, led by:
- the United Kingdom (6,000)
- China (5,700)
- India (5,600)
- the Philippines (2,400)
- Germany (2,300).
Net long term migration
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24 Comments
Another couple of years of this sort of thing, together with dairy exports and the looming construction boom and will be very interesting to see what the OCR, NZD and house prices are all sitting. Exciting time to be in NZ. Could be expensive being 'out of the market' waiting for the global economy to fall apart...
Exactly. We are also past 'peak sun power' (finite number of hydrogen atoms fusing to become helium, billions used by the day!) but going to be thousands of years before we need to worry about that.. I won't be selling up and living under a rock waiting for the sun to eventually turn off...
Shale oil and gas has seen energy in the US become cheap as chips. New nuclear technology a few decades away (the sort that can't be used for weapons manufacturer and is less risky), the whole lot of renewables are getting cheaper and more effective.
I would like to see who these migrants are and what they do or will do here .
- Where do they plan to live ?
- Can we house them?
- How much new capital are they bringing in here ?
- Are they investors who will invest in, or start businesses ?
- Are they professionals who will get good paying work , pay tax and add to GDP
- Are they students?
- Are they temporary workers who will help rebuild Chch ?
- Are they fruit pickers?
- Are they ageing relatives/ parents of previuos migrnat families ?
- Where do they come from ?
- Are they likely to successfully integrate here ?
- How many are Middle eastern or North African refugees from warzones who have no skills whatsoever and will find no work here?
Some commentry I read lately was predicting iron ore prices to keep dropping toward $80 USD/tonne (cf $120 at present) and the AUD to keep falling to 60c against the greenback. If this happens I'd put money on a net inflow from AU happening.
Although I see iron ore prices as more like the situation that happens when a long line of cars at a red light all of a sudden gets the green -> gas gas, brakes.... gas, gas. There are many individuals that go at their own rate of increase which conflicts with others and causes these periods of braking.
Folks, compared to many another locality in the wide, wide world, we are a Haven.
We have thin population, relatively enlightened government, natural resources up the wazoo (net food and energy exporter), are open to the world via relaxed visa and work requirements, and are nice people.
That's a Lotta incentive to come here.....so which of these would y'all have us Switch Off?
A question about the figures quoted above .....Where are the South African migrants in all this ?
There seem to be an awful lot of them about , but they never appear in the numbers .... ever
Its maybe a dumb question on the breakdown of where they come from , but has anyone ever seen the figures for people from South Africa?
I am sure more South Africans come here that say Germans or Filipinos .
It is recorded at the border.
http://www.stats.govt.nz/infoshare/
Tourism -> International travel and Migration, then you want one of the reports on Permanent & long-term migration by country of residence, but which report will depend on which other information (age/ sex/ citizenship/ occupation) you want.
That was a bit of a wind up Pouggey. First a departure from the usual anti chinese sentiment (the problem is really the money spilling out of China as much as the culture), but also just a poke at the many on these forums. Didn't get a bite though so it must have been too obvious.
We need to take a breather from this seemingly haphazard immigration policy , which is starting to look like an event of Tsumanic proportions , while we:-
1) Get on top of the current housing backlog of somewhere between 39,000 and 50,000 housing untis
2) Have a review of immigration policy and rules
3) Have a review of precisely which skills we are short of and target those folk so that newcomers dont join the ranks of the unemployed or poverty statistics
4) Find out exactly how many previous migrants have successfully integrated , are settled , have found work , are contributing by paying TAX and been a positive outcome for all
5) Have a clear idea as to how many people we want , and where they should be encouraged to settle .
BM, with respect your argument is flawed.
1) We need immigrants (skills, capacity) to achieve this.
2) It should be ongoing
3) We try to do this at present via the skills shortage lists / visas
5) Pretty much all of us. I don't think there are any living kiwis who can say they or their ancestors didn't immigrate here originally.
6) Whose clear idea should be deemed right? I think JK and his merry men will say they have this point covered already too.
Okay , we are all immigrants or desecendants of immigrants , but I suspect that quite a number of migrants have not been able to settle well here .
We have these catagories , each with different rules and requirements for entry
- Skilled migrants ( plus partners and children) English is required
- Investor migrants ( Plus partners and children)
- Work permit applicants / holders (plus partners and children)English is not required but should be
- Pacific Islanders( plus partners and children)
- Balance of family ( old aged parents and siblings)
- Refugees
We need to ask if we are getting the right migrants , and there is no cheating and deception going on , as we suspect there is .
Its almost impossibleto get in on points without English as a first language
Its obviuos that something is wrong when we look at the ESOL numbers , its almost impossible to work without speaking some English here , so these people cannot make a real contributution, and I suspect they are either unemployed or under-employed .
Culturally, Asians dont register as unemployed with WINZ as its seen as failure , so they work for each other often as expoited domestic workers , or menial workers.
Are these the migrants we want?
Some are buying their way in as so called "investors" , but where is the money really coming from ?
Do we want these dubious characters here as migrants ?
Then , we have a net housing shortage , yet we are opening the gates to more people , which is negatively financially impacting on those already here unable to afford housing
Why dont we the public know how many we are targetting to optimise the population , I have seen some suggested numbers in articles on the Interest website , but they are by independant bodies who are not the decision makers
What is the real policy?
THE NZIER Say
In 2006 Australia’s Productivity Commission concluded skilled migrants lift labour participation and increase the capability of the labour force, providing a “positive, but small” increase in productivity.
So on balance, international evidence points to benefits from immigration to both immigrants and the native population in terms of a lift in income per capita. "
...........................................................................
The Australian Productivity Commision says:
Impacts of immigration
Turning to the impacts of immigration, while there are labour market benefits, these can be (and often have been?) overstated, especially from the perspective of the potential to enhance the local population’s welfare. More people translates into more jobs, more output, more income and more consumption. A bigger domestic market and a bigger domestic economy. But, as noted, the real question for a (sustainable) policy is whether existing citizens (and their descendents) will be better off as a result.
Ultimately (in the longer run) the impact of immigration on per capita incomes of the existing population depends on a combination of many forces. These include: the effects on labour force participation and productivity; whether there are any economies (or diseconomies) of scale in production and consumption; how the returns to Australia’s natural resources are distributed; the effect on the government’s net fiscal position; and how any fiscal gains or losses are distributed. It also depends on whether there are any distortions in the domestic economy that prevent an efficient adjustment to the changing size and structure of the population (to which I will return).
per capita income of just 0.7 per cent ($320) and only after 20 years. MIt was swamped by other, domestic drivers of productivity growth. Moreover, most of the aggregate gain accrued to migrants themselves — the average incomes of the population existing in ‘year zero’ actually declined slightly. /*-->*/
The finding that the effects are generally small is similar to that of previous studies, both here and overseas. There are two, commonsense, reasons for it:
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First, the ‘flow’ of (extra) migrants is small relative to the ‘stock’ of the existing population and labour force.
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Second, the forces that determine the effects on the incomes of the existing population often offset each other, and some of the effects wash out in the long run.
It is also a fallacy that higher immigration counteracts population ageing. Beyond an annual immigration level of around 100 000 people, the demographic benefits have been shown to diminish greatly, with migrants impacting much more on the size of the population than on its age structure. The main reason is that migrants age too! We would need to bring in increasingly more of them to ‘backfill’ the age structure over time. Indeed, the Commission calculated that to preserve the current age profile of the population, the immigration-to-population ratio would need to rise to three per cent (triple its peak of 2008-9). This would make Australia a population ‘super-power’ of 100+ million people by mid-century!
Modelling doesn’t tell us the whole story of course. Models can only be constructs of the economy and can’t encompass everything that matters. Ours left out scale
effects, externalities and dynamic influences — all of which can matter for economic outcomes — as well as social and environmental impacts (though their potential was acknowledged).
For example, a key influence on the actual productivity/participation outcomes for migrants will be their work ethic. Migrants forsake much culturally and socially to come here; their ambition is typically to achieve a higher standard of living, and hard work is part of that. Moreover they typically want a better life for their children and most see education as crucial. Indeed the children of migrants often realise their parents’ ambitions for them, with statistical evidence demonstrating their above-average educational and labour market outcomes.
This also suggests that the impacts of migration should properly be considered over long time periods. For example, while concerns are often expressed about migrants being greater beneficiaries of the ‘welfare state’, the reverse is generally the case once the impacts are assessed over their lifetimes, let alone those of their children.
This is also relevant to the social impacts of migration. The first wave of any ethnic group generally has a tougher time and faces more community resistance than those who come later and, especially, their Australian-born descendants. (Think of the experience with the Italians, Greeks and Vietnamese.) That said, not all cultures and not all types of migrants are equally receptive to integration or assimilation within the host society, and many countries are increasingly being forced to confront the adverse consequences of this for the functioning of their societies.
The domestic forcesTurning to the domestic side of population policy, the first point to make is that population size per se is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for economic prosperity. We can all think of poor countries with large populations and rich countries with small populations (as well as the reverse). The number of people is less important than how well they are utilised in an economy and society.
ETC
So the NZIER cherry pick the Australian Productivity Commision. In reality their position is quite different. It looks to me as though it is the role of the NZIER to add credibility in the public mind to policies that benefit, bankers, the construction sector, investors and developers.
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