The flow of people coming to New Zealand on work visas appears to be reverting back to pre-Covid trends.
According to the latest figures from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), 13,410 people arrived in NZ on work visas in April.
April was the third consecutive month that work visa arrivals have declined from the recent peak of 20,199 in January. That suggests a return to pre-pandemic trends when work visa arrivals would peak over summer and then slowly decline heading in winter before picking up again later in the year.
The number of work visas being approved have followed broadly similar trends, with 14,511 approved during April, down from the recent peak of 20,610 in February.
That suggests the number of people coming into the country is likely to remain around 14,000 or 15,000 a month over the next few months.
Of course there are many more people than that in NZ on work visas at any time, with migrant workers often staying for several years, and many eventually gaining NZ residence visas, with others leaving to return home when their visas expire.
The MBIE figures show there were 199,509 people altogether in NZ on work visas at the end of April, down slightly from the recent peak of 200,352 at the end of March.
That means foreign worker numbers have now fully recovered to pre-Covid levels after dropping dramatically during the pandemic period when the border was closed.
At the end of April 2019, before the pandemic struck, there were 200,838 people in NZ on work visas.
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70 Comments
Down 15% on April last year.
Back to 2015/2016 levels, and given the population increase in that time, arrivals on work visas as a portion of our population down 12% on 2016 levels still.
Could those that got permanent residency during covid be affecting this? Perhaps someone with permanent residency is still leaving and arriving each year but are now permanent resident so it's not getting recorded as a working visa arrival whenever they come back?
Potentially! Good point, as resident arrivals still trending up and higher than pre-covid levels by a few thousand.
Other important considerations re immigration:
- We went ~2 years with close to net 0 immigration. Immediately followed by a net increase well over 100,000. Why? If short term visa holders don't arrive (2020, 2021), they don't leave (2022, 2023), and net inflows show an increase. This is now tapering out.
- Fast track residency converted tens of thousands of short term visa holders to residents, which may have encouraged these people to stay on longer.
- Skills based work visa offered people a longer visa term, again encouraging them to stay on longer.
- Many approved applicants for residency are family members, secondary applicants.
- All Departures April on April up 15%
- All Arrivals April on April up 2.6%
- Work visa arrivals trending down, the trend may reverse, but given the state of the economy this would have to be based on false promises.
Anecdotally, I'm hearing "I want to go home.".
Where are all these people going to live if the supply of new dwellings dwindles?
TTP
If my anecdotal observations are anything to go by, you can fit a LOT of people in a 3 bedroom Williams Corp attached townhouse.
About 10 people. Each paying $80 a week.
There seams to be a lot immigrants who come over on work visa's. They work hard and long hours maybe 55 hours a week @ $32 per hour. So they clear $1760 pre tax and $1325 post tax per week. They spend $80 on rent, maybe $145 on food & $100 on transport. They then send the $1,000 left back home where their kids have a good life. You can always pick them as they opt out of kiwisaver.
I don't know if this is good for our society long term. It is certainly not good for our current account. Then again we do collect $20,000 paye from each of these migrants per annum & they cost the entitlement system nothing. So in this respect they are a positive to the system.
I posted the other day about overhearing a conversation in the Warehouse from a bunch of clearly immigrant construction workers who were rallying together to buy a single small heater for "their room" in a shared house. I can easily believe 10 @ 80 p/w or thereabouts, if the apparently sad state of their finances was anything to go by.
I guess the question is without them could we still collect the PAYE/tax from the same economic output, but provided by existing Kiwis who don't then place additional demand on housing and public services ... it just might mean that employers might have to pay more (to get people off the couch, to paraphrase I think Shane Jones).
I'm not convinced that there can really be a shortage of semi-skilled workers - the type we seem to be bringing in the most of.
I think Covid border closures demonstrated that, as one other commenter has pointed out on this page. The shut border put to rest a lot of myths about society falling over without cheap imported labour, as it opened up opportunities for students, people returning to workforce, older people re-contributing to the workforce etc. Anybody who wanted work could get it, basically.
Now with a seemingly open border why would an employer bother with the hassle of that when they can just import a unit of compliant human capital to work like a dog for peasant wages because that represents a huge opportunity in life for them? I remember in the runup to the election a cafe owner being interviewed saying his #1 vote decider was who was going to allow skilled immigration of baristas to resume, as he couldn't find a barista in all of Nelson. In other words there wasn't a single person in Nelson willing to either upskill, change jobs, or re-enter the workforce for the crap wages he would have been paying.
We can unequivocally have skill shortages in critical areas like healthcare, where you can't just coax a student off the couch to become a cardiac surgeon overnight. But aside from that I fail to see the need for cheap imported labour. We have unemployed people in this country, we have underemployed people who might like to work more, if we restrict labour supply the market presumably needs to pay them more and they will pick up work.
The 44% increase in welfare benefits under the last Labour Govt probably explains that. Why work when you can get more money on the benefit? The average family on the dole now makes more money ($1300 a week) than a person earning the median wage. A sole parent wth 2 kids is clearing $1000 a week, plus is in the queue for a brand new million dollar Kainga Ora house.
Despite a massive labour shortage over the last few years, the number of people on benefits went up. There is now a sizeable group of people who are deliberately choosing to not work, as opposed to being unemployed because they cant find work.
They don't cost us anything. But then they get permanent residency after a few years, then they bring their elderly parents over on a Parents Visa for the free healthcare and Government pension despite never paying a cent in income tax. Those ones cost us an awful lot of money.
You don't have a clue what you are talking about. If you want to comment make sure you understand how things work.
The only health care they can access/afford is via the ED departments of hospitals.
The collateral costs are huge.
But that tends to be the way eh - privatise the profits and socialise the costs.
Presumably these people arrive already having somewhere to live arranged prior to hopping on a plane?
Unless Landlords are deliberately turfing out New Zealanders onto the street so they can house migrants, then the supply of dwellings must be keeping pace? Mind you, doesn't factor for people forced to go sleep in their car/couch surf because they cannot afford the rent.
Unless Landlords are deliberately turfing out New Zealanders onto the street so they can house migrants
Some do prefer recent arrivals, just like some businesses do - and quite rightly from their own personal benefit.
However, at the margin, some currently housed New Zealanders will end up on the street as they lose out to the new competition who through no fault of their own are prepared to live 'more to a house'.
by tothepoint | 22nd May 24, 10:05am "Where are all these people going to live if the supply of new dwellings dwindles?"
The right rhetorical question is "what motivates someone who lacks social conscience to ask this in the first place?" Praying for another boom in house prices? Hoping rents will go to the moon enough where rental yields are attractive enough to calm the jittery investor nerves?
Ever more instances of overcrowded housing, hot bedding and homeless people sleeping in their cars is more the story. The nation is "tapped out" and this cost of living crisis is killing off any optimism of quick relief.
The right question, is what motivates someone to blame this on migrants instead of the real problem, which is restrictive planning and building regulations. The problem has always been home ownership cartels blocking supply via the unscientific method of council planning.
Disagree, we could have zero migrants and there would be zero problem caused by migrants with respect to housing. We are under no obligation to take in anyone from overseas (specific agreements aside e.g. refugees).
Those things you mention are indeed a problem on the supply side, but they would be reduced in severity with negative/zero/lower population growth (the demand side). It's called supply and demand for a reason.
Some would argue we do have an obligation, given your nationality is pure luck. But putting that aside, it’s typically a win-win situation with respect to economic growth and culture. And there’s no evidence that migrants displace jobs generally. We could have zero migrants and go into a deeper recession, because we’re leaving economic growth on the table.
But even if we paused immigration, we’d still have a massive housing shortage (we ran that natural experiment 2 years ago). And we’re unlikely to get any sort of large scale build out without migrant labour.
We have half the population density of the US, and our land is less than 1% urbanised. NZ is actually a pretty big country, and we have plenty of room to grow up, out, and in population. Our problem is just self inflicted stagnation; artificial scarcity to drive up the wealth of a certain portion of the population. It’s really a pretty simple problem.
There's a lot to unpack there powerup, but here goes:
Some would argue we do have an obligation, given your nationality is pure luck.
They might, they are welcome to sponsor them fully, while staying in their house here or overseas.
And there’s no evidence that migrants displace jobs generally.
I've seen it myself, heck - even the mainstream media and politicians are on record wanting immigrants to, you guessed it, suppress wage inflation. Whether it's jobs or pay rate, those already here (including recent arrivals themselves) lose out.
But even if we paused immigration, we’d still have a massive housing shortage (we ran that natural experiment 2 years ago). And we’re unlikely to get any sort of large scale build out without migrant labour.
We did run the experiment, and the rents were well down, 20% in Auckland where I was at the time for an apartment complex with 100's of similar units (enough turnover to gauge the market). I don't want a massive build out, it sounds like growth for growths sake and a smaller piece of NZ for everyone already here. Unless these migrants are brining land then all more build out will do is cause more productive farmland to be concreted over.
We have half the population density of the US, and our land is less than 1% urbanised. NZ is actually a pretty big country, and we have plenty of room to grow up, out, and in population. Our problem is just self-inflicted stagnation; artificial scarcity to drive up the wealth of a certain portion of the population. It’s really a pretty simple problem.
If increasing our population density is the answer, why are the majority of our immigrants coming from high density countries such as India, Philippines and China?
I remember when we had 3 million people, we now have 5 and nothing seems fairer for young kiwi's to me. Why has our GDP per capita (awful measure as it is) been going backwards with all this 'growth' in population. I'm not anti the people, but they come here to get away from something, to something, we're at risk of destroying what they want to come here for.
I’m not talking about anecdotes. There is real research on this question, and migrants modestly increase the wages of existing workers. Even the productivity commission had to begrudgingly accept this when they tried to attack out immigration settings, and came up with nothing. The increase in demand migrants bring, along with the complimentary jobs they create, outweigh the jobs they displace.
Yes rents in the Auckland CBD modestly decreased. Probably because all the international students were gone. But we saw the biggest property price rises in a long time (possibly ever?). Who tf would want to live in the Auckland CBD these days, though.
I’m personally not worried about paving over a couple of dairy farms to house thousands of productive people. Dairy is just industrial wasteland.
GDP per capita hasn’t been going backwards at all. TFP is trash though.
That experiment of zero immigrants during Covid times meant the apartment I own in CBD had its rent decline from 525pw to $425pw (and we were lucky to get a tenant). It is Supply and Demand.
You and whatever govt is in power look at economic wealth by country and want to see it grow. I divide by the population to get GDP per capita. Now check the stats for countries with high growth per capita and match it with immigration data.
He’s rancid isn’t he
With personal attacks you've gone off yourself. Try making biltong instead. Get some spice into your life.
Family of 4 vacates a 3 bedroom rental to move to Australia. Landlord rents out to 8 new arrivals. The lounge is converted to a sleeping room and so is the attached garage. All Auckland side streets are now one way between 6pm and 8am due to all the cars parked both sides of the road.
Who is going to build new dwellings if the supply of migrants dwindles?
PUK
Presumably people that are already here. You know, just like during covid when the boarder was shut (and construction continued).
If there was one silver lining from that time it must be that all the myths about what would happen without immigration have been found wanting, for those that care to look. Lower rents, young given a go at jobs, people like myself switched to completely unrelated fields for a change. Note now almost every job wants 2+ years' experience again and it's very rare to see offers to train if you've got the right attitude.
Probably in South Auckland
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/developers-sweating-as-flood-of-new-home…
Yep. All easily predicted 1.5 years ago. And it will get much worse
ALL SPRUIKERS SHOULD READ THAT LINK
It is not a typical OneWoof article, its speaks the truth.
Its going to be a bloodbath.
In what magic world do you not have to incur rates and insurance.....
Rerun your numbers with 2k rates and 1k insurance (is this too cheap?)..... might take a tiny 50-60k off the value.
I would include pooperty management fees as well. oops lower now off the bid.
2k rates and 1k insurance would be magic here in Wellington!
Left these out intentionally as could be anywhere between $5-15K expenses depending on where. For those, rates would be $4-5k, insurance def higher than $1k. PM fees 5%, and $1k? yearly maintenance. Interest - 6.39% is the lowest I've seen recently. $10k expenses + interest?
Any mortgage over $453,834 and you're negatively geared. At $800k mortgage, it's $30K negatively geared.
If anything over ~$600-650K hard cash, your money is better off in a savings account.
Agree I think you may see families with 150k income between partners and say 100-150k savings interested at the 550-600k levels, until then the developer is going to continue to sweat. Of course they do not have to sell them if they don't need to, they could rent them out and hope for a bounce.... but their finance is going to look nuts, north of 10% easy... they are dead men walking here.
Fairly easy to buy shares with a 5-6% dividend yield in NZ, which is likely to grow with inflation. For the extra concentration risk and work required in running a rental property, I'd want to be making closer to 10% to make it worth my while.
for sure people took the risk on the basis of tax free capital gains.... was a great deal back in the day, remember negative gearing and LAQCs, all the amazing reasons to accept such low yields made sense in a world tilted in your benefit.
Take it all away and yes an investor needs serious yield, that's still not reflected in asking price and won't be until developers are forced to sell by their financers.
I bought AREITs with a 7-8% yield. As soon as interest rates start coming down, I'll make a motza in capital gains. In the meantime I am being paid very well to wait.
Yes, it's a great time to be buying bonds and bond-like things. I am doing similar.
"It is not a typical OneWoof article, its speaks the truth."
You're a crack up ITG, "This article says what I think, so please read it's the truth. Yep I know, I usually rubbish One Roof, but that's because their other articles say stuff I don't like to hear, so they must be untrue. LOL
Well there is around 11,000 more people in NZ now than there were 6 months ago excluding fresh NZ born babies. Where do all of these people go? I dunno. Maybe in one of the 10,700 houses or apartments currently available for rent? Or the 44,300 houses currently for sale? And that's just TM.
Supply and demand is a funny thing. I hear there are record level completions. This will fall off a cliff, as HM states, but will negative net immigration win the race?
Negative net immigration is what won the race in Ireland.
Bingo. Watch the YOY net migration figure drop as the recession deepens and there could be a big problems. I remember my old Irish colleagues stories of their friends trapped in negative equity back home while the rest fled for better opportunities.
Fortunately all the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants who bought houses here can simply mail the bank the keys of their negative equity home or investment property, leave their leased car in the airport long term car park, and get on a plane back home leaving all their debt behind them. Then apply for new visas to Australia or Canada. The single passport Kiwi's sadly don't have that option (too easy to find you in Australia lol)
You assume they can all pay the highest market rent and buy houses without mortgages. Sadly that is not the bulk of new immigration and in the healthcare and tech sector they will be extremely lucky to even see the living wage, most do not get even that, and even then the living wage is only enough to afford 1 hostel bunk bed and all the bills and costs associated with their employment.
Sadly even in a market like the tech sector and for large government projects we still had installers working for nothing and struggling to afford their hostel accommodation; see UFB rollout. Since then the housing and employment market has gotten worse with all the AEWV fraud going on.
I hope these are all medical professionals and police officers
Either way we’ll benefit from them economically. I hope they’re not cops though.
Didn't realise cops and doctors were in the business of slopping up mediocre takeaways and selling vapes.
You'd be surprised. Some years ago our trainee programmer held a PhD in Engineering from Russia, while his highly qualified pediatrician wife could only find work as a dental assistant.
Those with Phds in engineering know it is little more then evidence of tilting at windmills and holding down a second marriage; because you often need a first marriage to pay for the Phd. ;) Career experience is far more evidence of competency. The same goes for those with arts doctorates who often miss out on the experience to help design better surveys for their degrees from the outset so become heavily siloed in their abilities, losing connection with the real world experiences and people.
Most of our Phd engineers cannot get decent jobs in NZ either. So adding to that competition is not a good thing. Also here is the bigger issue you cannot say because they have a Phd that makes them a genius at everything. A Phd in engineering are often exceptionally new and inexperienced to most programming development practices, security measures and key libraries and if you are assessing the work based on the bias of the Phd & it sort of working without looking in depth at the methods used it will always be flawed. If you do not have the qualified judgement of an expert programmer seek it with peer review and encouraging integration & further training with the professional NZ technical orgs, esp the infosec ones.
Be great if they all were ! ....but looking at it logically, why would a Dr immigrate here to work for kiwi pesos !! ....then a new police officer transferred to some small rural town run by gangs ! ....thanx Jacinda et al for all your "feel good, be nice" crap ....how many New Zealand history books since 2019 will have to "censored", before being published, by a govt "special committee" ???
NZ doctors and police officers who are willing to work in remote areas with high indigenous populations can earn a fortune. A town in Australia has been advertising for a GP for months, paying $500k a year and a free house. Cops get huge sign on bonuses, and accommodation benefits to go to the NT. All that "cultural safety" training in NZ is worth far more in Australia now.
I've just been on a trip to Europe and met an Aussie guy who told me no amount of money would ever tempt him to work with the aboriginals in the outback.
All the pillars holding the house of cards, pun intended, of a property market are starting to buckle.
And the National Party are trying their best to prop them up. Tax incentives, Kainga Ora budget cuts, no MDRS, etc.
This is why I can't vote right even though I'm economically conservative.
NZ Democracy is a government of the landlords, by the landlords and for the landlords.
Need to shut that door whilst we're in a recession. Let's call it an Austerity Emergency.
The door will shut itself. Immigrants are here for jobs, ones that no longer exist - they will go back.
They will get granted permanent residency and then they can go on the dole.
They are here for the jobs to a point, but for most (not all) they are here to obtain Residence and the entitlements that come with that (including for their family members).
This is why we keep seeing media reports from the Courts of working 80 hrs, paid 40 hrs etc - job offers for sale at 30-40k (effectively paying their own wages) and others being forced to hand back part of their official pay to the employer in cash on payday. Sometimes they will even pay their own tax to IRD so they meet the requirements of their Residence application. These are all out in mainstream media now - although generally things only come to light when the 'deal' turns sour.
They will continue to come if we allow them to, so no, the door won't close itself. It's our door and we're responsible for whether it is open or closed and the resulting consequences of that choice. Most seem to be voting with their feet (mainly to Australia) rather than at the poll booth it would seem on this matter.
That's a lot of sheep
More people with a lack of infrastructure and services to support them . A social welfare system that is burgeoning . We are heading somewhere and it is not a good place.
2019 was a record year for immigration, so getting "back to pre covid levels" is nothing to be proud of. Remember when the Labour Govt promise was to reduce it to 20-30,000 per year? Yeah, what an absolute joke.
Secondly, we have 200,000 NEW immigrants, who are ADDITIONAL to the 210,000 temporary work visa holders that Jacinda Ardern conferred permanent residency on in 2022. And they are all on top of the number of people simply handed residency visas by Labour since the border reopened and who dont show up in the work visa category. So the number of foreign workers in NZ far exceeds pre-Covid levels. Its funny how the old abnormal quickly becomes the "new normal".
Many of those with temporary work visas are utilising the 461 visa to get to Australia (partner visa for a NZ citizen on a 444 visa). Hot topic on FB is whether to wait for permanent residency approval in NZ or to just leave now and start over in Australia.
And those extra 210,000+ newly minted permanent residents are all now NZ's responsbility to provide welfare benefits for in the recession. How lucky are we?
Yes but remember the mean old business lobby literally forced Labour - at gunpoint - to do this. It's not like they were in a position to say 'no' or anything.
Of course they could. It only needed a smattering of working class MPs. How do other countries with better welfare benefits than NZ keep immigration low?
That last sentence of mine was meant 'tongue-in-cheek' as it were.
To your point you are 100% right, all it needed was a few Labour MPs who actually give a tinker's toss about the working class to have said "no we aren't going to import a working class that will work for even less".
At the same time, and with my tin foil hat on, I suspect they quite liked the idea of importing an easy source of future votes.
The immigrants who are energetic, hard-working and determined will not vote for recent Labour govts - they migh have voted for Helen Clark.
The immigrants that can stay on in NXZ will cause an overhang of cheap minimum wage workers in NZ, sure they will be keen workers vs many long term dole beneficiaries, but from the bottom of this cycle they will depress wage growth (further causing NZers to move to Aussie) and will 100% entrench those on the dole and not even trying to work.
Opinions are invariably 'immigration good' or 'immigration bad'. The reality is more confused and best summarised as 'highly paid immigrants' benefit us all and low-paid immigrants are a disaster for low-paid Kiwis. They not only hold wages and conditions down, kill training opportunities but also support a certain level of criminality.
One of the reasons for Brexit.
Did we build half as many houses in April to house that many people and their families who will join them later?
And I keep reading here that property prices are going to plunge....LOL...I've been reading about this pending property crash for well over a year.
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