People leaving New Zealand hit record levels in the year to November 2024, in another sign of the weakness in the country’s economy that moved to a technical recession in the third quarter.
Data released by Statistics New Zealand on Thursday (Jan 23) showed that 127,800 people left the Pacific nation in the year to November, up 28 per cent on the prior 12 month period. This was provisionally the highest number of people leaving in an annual period ever, according to the statistics bureau.
Of those leaving, more than 50 per cent were New Zealand citizens, according to the data.
New Zealand, which has a population of just 5.3 million, has seen its economy struggle over the last couple of years as the central bank increased the official cash rate to dampen historically high inflation.
Michael Gordon, senior economist at Westpac said that a lot of people come to New Zealand for work opportunities and when these dry up people leave.
“It’s about work opportunities, especially here (New Zealand) versus Australia. Australia’s economy is still running reasonably strongly,” Gordon said. “There are more opportunities over there now so we are seeing quite high outflows of Kiwis.”
However, people leaving does continue to be offset by inward migration.
Statistics New Zealand said net migration — the number of people moving to New Zealand permanently minus those leaving New Zealand — was at 30,600 in the year to November 2024. Net migration peaked in the year ended October 2023 at 135,700.
Source: Asia One