Chart and table of the New Zealand net migration rate from 1950 to 2025. United Nations projections are also included through the year 2100.

In the 2023 financial year, the net overseas migration of New Zealand nationals to Australia is estimated at 15.34 thousand emigrants. This marked a significant increase compared to the previous financial year.

New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Sri Lanka data was reported at 340.000 Person in Jan 2025. This records a decrease from the previous number of 490.000 Person for Dec 2024. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Sri Lanka data is updated monthly, averaging 58.000 Person from Jan 2001 (Median) to Jan 2025, with 289 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 734.000 Person in Feb 2024 and a record low of -48.000 Person in Jan 2021. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Sri Lanka data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Stats NZ. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G009: International Migration: Net Migration: by Citizenship.

The Migration Data Explorer enables you to easily access migration data to address the overarching research themes and enduring questions that relate to migration in New Zealand.

This statistic displays the forecast of the net migration in New Zealand from 2018 to 2038, by ethnicity. The net migration of the Asian population in New Zealand is projected to be around 15 thousand people by 2038.

New Zealand Migrant Arrival: Visa Type: Student data was reported at 3,439.000 Person in Jan 2025. This records an increase from the previous number of 1,654.000 Person for Dec 2024. New Zealand Migrant Arrival: Visa Type: Student data is updated monthly, averaging 1,115.000 Person from Jan 2001 (Median) to Jan 2025, with 289 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 6,036.000 Person in Feb 2023 and a record low of 0.000 Person in Jun 2003. New Zealand Migrant Arrival: Visa Type: Student data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Stats NZ. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G012: International Migration: by Visa Type.

Analysis of ‘New Zealand Migration’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://www.kaggle.com/timoboz/migration-nz on 13 February 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

Context

**This dataset shows the migration to and from New Zealand by country and citizenship from 1979 to 2016. **

Content

The columns in this dataset are:

• Measure: The signal type given in this row, one of: "Arrivals", "Departures", "Net"
• Country: Country from where people arrived into to New Zealand (for Measure = "Arrivals") or to where they left (for Measure = "Departures"). Contains special values "Not Stated" and "All countries" (grand total)
• Citizenship: Citizenship of the migrants, one of: "New Zealand Citizen", "Australian Citizen", "Total All Citizenships"
• Year: Year of the measurement
• Value: Number of migrants

Permanent and long-term arrivals include overseas migrants who arrive in New Zealand intending to stay for a period of 12 months or more (or permanently), plus New Zealand residents returning after an absence of 12 months or more. Permanent and long-term departures include New Zealand residents departing for an intended period of 12 months or more (or permanently), plus overseas visitors departing New Zealand after a stay of 12 months or more. For arrival series, the country of residence is the country where a person arriving in New Zealand last lived for 12 months or more (country of last permanent residence). For departure series, the country of residence is the country where a person departing New Zealand intends to live for the next 12 months or more (country of next permanent residence).

Acknowledgements

Curated data by figure.nz, original data from Stats NZ. Dataset licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 - CC BY 4.0.

Inspiration

A good challenge would be to explain New Zealand migration flows as a function of the economic performance of New Zealand or other countries (combine with other datasets). The data could be possibly linked up with other data sources to predict general migration to/from countries based on external factors.

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Hong Kong SAR (China) data was reported at -32.000 Person in Dec 2024. This records an increase from the previous number of -68.000 Person for Nov 2024. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Hong Kong SAR (China) data is updated monthly, averaging 18.500 Person from Jan 2001 (Median) to Dec 2024, with 288 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 196.000 Person in Jan 2020 and a record low of -85.000 Person in Nov 2003. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Hong Kong SAR (China) data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Stats NZ. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G009: International Migration: Net Migration: by Citizenship.

In New Zealand, internal migration is typically the most difficult component of net migration’s contribution to subnational population change to measure. Internal migrants are not required to register their moves with any agency. The five-yearly census of population and dwellings has included a question on “usual residence five years ago” since 1971, which has been the authoritative data source for measuring internal migration. However, the infrequency of the collection (every five years), and the ‘snapshot’ nature of a transition-based measure are significant limitations. Other measures of annual subnational population change, such as the Treasury’s Insights tool, provide estimates of internal migration flows between TAs by using linked administrative data. Their approach identifies a set of decision rules for assigning location to individuals, based on a quality assessment of a wide range of address sources in the IDI (Where we come from, where we go). The TA location transitions provide the basis for deriving statistics of annual internal migration as demonstrated by the Insights tool. The data published with this report is the first series we’ve created by estimating all internal migration flows using a movement-based approach. From individuals’ unique address notification histories in key data sources, the paired origin and destination locations defined individuals’ movements. Traditionally, we combined change of address data from a range of administrative sources with other information on international migration to produce estimates of net migration for broad subnational areas. Now, we can derive direct estimates of movements from address histories from the anonymised unit record information of address notifications in the IDI. This gives a better understanding of people’s movements within New Zealand. Internal migration information is of great interest to local and central government, businesses, and communities. Churn and turnover of populations at local area level is one of the contributors of subnational population change, in both size and characteristics. Read the full report here: https://www.stats.govt.nz/reports/internal-migration-estimates-using-linked-administrative-data-201417

In 2019 there were 272,436 immigrants from the United Kingdom living in New Zealand. The second largest migrant group in the country were Chinese immigrants, with a population of around 95 thousand people.

New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Europe data was reported at 1,702.000 Person in Jan 2025. This records an increase from the previous number of 642.000 Person for Dec 2024. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Europe data is updated monthly, averaging 584.000 Person from Jan 2001 (Median) to Jan 2025, with 289 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 2,379.000 Person in Jan 2020 and a record low of -1,214.000 Person in Jun 2021. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Europe data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Stats NZ. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G009: International Migration: Net Migration: by Citizenship.

Abstract

These data consist of a long-term follow-up of applicants to a migration visa lottery. Tongan households were surveyed as migrants in New Zealand, or non-migrants in Tonga. It was used to examine the long-term impacts of international migration by comparing immigrants who had successful ballot entries in a migration lottery program, and first moved almost a decade ago, with people who had unsuccessful entries into those same ballots. It was additionally used to study how migrating from a poor country to a rich country affects economic beliefs, preference parameters, and household decision-making efficiency. In a ten-year follow-up survey of applicants to a migration lottery program we elicit risk and time preferences and pro-market beliefs for the migrants and the unsuccessful applicants. The successful and the unsuccessful applicants are each linked to closest relative households, who would stay in the home country if the applicant moved, to play lab-in-the-field games that measure intra-family trust and the efficiency of intra-family decision-making.

Geographic coverage

The survey covers Tongans who applied to the 2002-05 Pacific Access Category migration visa program, along with linked households of their family members. This involved surveying in both New Zealand and Tonga (along with a small number of surveys of movers to third countries).

Analysis unit

Data are collected at both the individual and household level

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Our population of interest consists of entrants to the 2002 to 2005 PAC migration lotteries. There were a total of 4,696 principal applicants of whom 367 were randomly selected as ballot winners (figure 2). Official records provided by the New Zealand immigration authorities in late 2012 show that 307 of these winners (84%) had residency applications approved and had ever migrated to New Zealand. The remaining 60 ballot winners did not migrate and are thus non-compliers to the treatment of migration.

Our main survey involved an extensive face-to-face interview, which also collected anthropometrics, blood pressure, peak lung flow, and included lab-in-the-field games. Of the 307 principal applicants ever migrating to New Zealand, 133 completed the full survey between late 2013 and the end of 2014. In order to bolster our sample size, in early 2015 we fielded a shortened survey that did not include health measurements or the lab-in-field games. This was mainly done as a telephone interview and was designed to reach those who had on-migrated beyond New Zealand or were located in parts of New Zealand that were impractical for face-to-face interviewing, although we also learned, through snowball effects, of more migrants in our face-to-face survey area and gave them the short survey as well. Overall, 61 additional ballot winners who had ever migrated to New Zealand were given the short survey, including 11 who had now on-migrated to Australia (ten) and the UK (one). In total, we were able to survey 194 households with principal applicants who ever migrated to New Zealand after winning the ballot.

We had even less information available for the ballot losers and non-compliers since these individuals had not filled out residency applications. We therefore used the same surveying approach for these groups as we had in our previous survey, which was to sample from the same villages in Tonga from which our migrants originated. Out of 4329 ballot losers, 143 were administered the long form survey and 39 the short survey (of which nine had subsequently moved to New Zealand through alternative pathways, including by winning a later round of the PAC lottery). Finances limited us to this relatively small sample, but, based on our previous research, we judged that it would give us enough power to measure economically significant impacts. An advantage of surveying from the same origin villages is that we can implicitly control for any unobserved characteristics that vary spatially in Tonga. Finally, we have a small sample of nine non-compliers; six who received the long survey and three the short survey. This is out of a population of 60 non-compliers, which hence made it difficult to find many individuals in this group.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

Four separate questionnaires were administered: - a survey for migrant households in New Zealand - a survey for non-migrant households in Tonga - a survey of linked partner households - a short survey

New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Fiji data was reported at 313.000 Person in Jan 2025. This records an increase from the previous number of 305.000 Person for Dec 2024. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Fiji data is updated monthly, averaging 188.000 Person from Jan 2001 (Median) to Jan 2025, with 289 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,205.000 Person in May 2023 and a record low of -38.000 Person in Dec 2020. New Zealand Net Migration: Citizenship: Fiji data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Stats NZ. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G009: International Migration: Net Migration: by Citizenship.

In 2019 there were 99,585 immigrants aged 30 to 34 in New Zealand. The majority of immigrants in the country were over the age of 25 and the smallest age group were children aged zero to four years old.

This statistic presents the results of a survey on perceived percentage of immigrants in New Zealand as of October 2018. According to data published by Ipsos, respondents in New Zealand overestimated the proportion of immigrants in New Zealand by nine percent. On average, the respondents thought that around 32 out of every 100 people in New Zealand were immigrants, when the actual share of immigrant population was around 23 percent in New Zealand.

International travel and migration statistics produced by Stats NZ measure the number and characteristics of international arrivals into New Zealand, and international departures from New Zealand. This is obtained from electronic passport and flight records, along with details from arrival and departure cards for every passenger, supplied to Stats NZ by the New Zealand Customs Service.

New Zealand Vital Statistics: Net Migration: Permanent and Long Term: sa data was reported at 4,640.000 Person in Sep 2018. This records a decrease from the previous number of 4,990.000 Person for Aug 2018. New Zealand Vital Statistics: Net Migration: Permanent and Long Term: sa data is updated monthly, averaging 710.000 Person from Jan 1982 (Median) to Sep 2018, with 441 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 6,470.000 Person in Sep 2016 and a record low of -3,350.000 Person in Oct 1988. New Zealand Vital Statistics: Net Migration: Permanent and Long Term: sa data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics New Zealand. The data is categorized under Global Database’s New Zealand – Table NZ.G003: Vital Statistics.

Interaction data required to run the analyses for the paper 'Migration through a small pore disrupts inactive chromatin organisation in neutrophil-like cells'. This data should be used in the github repository https://github.com/jacel/migration-chromatin in the folder 01_Hi-C/data.

International travel and migration statistics count passengers arriving into and departing from New Zealand. Passengers are split into one of three passenger types: overseas visitors, New Zealand-resident travellers, and permanent and long-term migrants. Arrivals and departures of overseas visitors and New Zealand-resident travellers are key indicators of tourism and travel. Permanent and long-term migration is a component of New Zealand’s population change, along with births and deaths. Migration affects the composition of the population as well as population size. International travel and migration statistics are based on electronic arrival and departure records for each international passenger, supplied to Stats NZ by the New Zealand Customs Service. These electronic records include flight and passport details, such as date of travel, date of birth, sex, and country of citizenship.

In 2019, approximately 1.18 thousand Filipino emigrants were living in New Zealand. The number of registered Filipinos who emigrated to New Zealand was highest in 2016.