Population growth from migration is now running at its highest level ever, with a net population gain from migration of 59,639 people in the year to July, according to Statistics NZ.
There was a net gain of 6525 migrants July which was also a record for the month.
Net migration (the number of people arriving here on a long term basis minus those leaving long term) has increased hugely in the last two years, rising from 10,569 in the year to July 2013, to 41,043 in the year to July 2014 to 59,639 in the current year.
The biggest source countries for the net gain in migrants for the year were India (12,566) followed by China and Hong Kong (8,864), The Philippines (4461) and the UK (3978).
Approximately three quarters of long term arrivals from India were on student visas, with most of those likely to be on what is referred to as a "pathway to residency" which gives students who have studied here extra points towards qualifying for residency once they have finished studying.
The latest figures show that migration is increasing this country's population by 1146 people a week, which is likely to add to housing and other infrastructure pressures in Auckland where an estimated 60% of new migrants settle.
"There is clearly no sign yet that migration is slowing," Westpac senior economist Felix Delbruck said in a First Impressions newsletter on the figures.
"The implications for the wider economy are deeply ambiguous," he said.
"On the one hand, rapid population growth is adding to demand for housing and related construction activity, particularly in Auckland.
"But the influx of migrants is also boosting the supply of available labour, which means higher unemployment and softer wage inflation in the short term.
"The combination of weaker economic growth and continued strong population growth is one reason why we believe the Reserve Bank will have to provide significant further interest rate support to meet its inflation target."
And ASB senior economist Chris Tennent-Brown said; "Net migration inflows remain at an extremely high level and are showing no sign of moderating. Strong net migration inflows are helping support robust levels of consumption, but are also adding workers to the labour market, and helping keep a lid on wage inflation."
Net long term migration
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19 Comments
What interests me is where the 143 people (net) who migrated to PN in July are going to live with only 112 places for rent, and 165 houses for sale?
Prehaps why rents are up 14% on last year here.
Auckland gained net 2850, but has 3973 places for rent, so while it gets all the headlines, actually not the worse as far as basic accomodation shortages are concerned
Those figures are NET so already have 'minus the ones that left' taken into account.
And the ones that passed away is part of natural pop growth, so then you add the ones that are born, and most cities (100k or there abouts pop) have more births than deaths to add to the pressure.
Generally you put more than 1 person to a house. 2 ( a couple ) sounds like a more normal number of people for a house. Problem is everyone wants the parts of Auckland that are close to areas of intense commercial activity. A number of the houses in you total available for rent metric are likely un-desirable by virtue of being hours away from the CBD during peak traffic.
Also if your numbers are from trademe they are probably extremely inflated because trademe's billing model encourages people to leave adverts up long after the places have been filled.
With at least 200,000 rental homes in Auckland and the average tenancy of under a year than you are going to expect at least 4,000 houses rented a week on average.
So 4,000 advertised does not mean that many are available for migrants etc.
4,000 is just the churn in the market.
ST. The two I heard on Commissariat Radio (RNZ) were a provincial mayor and a RE agent, so no surprises there!
QE seems to have run out of fizz on the markets this morning? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34015798
When it crashes it is now a bubble and can only be fed by overseas money coming in. All sharemarkets moved into correction last week pointing to a world slow down, unemployment will rise I except to see stories start to appear of job lay offs , then will come the mortgage sales, then the crash unlike anytime before where it just corrected
This government cracks me up, as soon as they cotton on something they are doing isn't popular, they revert to blatant lying, key and Woodhouse came out today saying it isn't really 60K a year coming in and actually staying.
Well if you have a net increase of 65K people a year that's exactly what it is, shame we have no unbiased media on TV anymore, people saying this kind of rubbish should be exposed fully.
Do we really have that many stupid people in NZ as what it's starting to seem?, it seems we really have a lot of people that buy into the governments constant propaganda and drivel.
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