Migration flow sets more records

Records have been smashed yet again as 57,800 migrants flooded into New Zealand in the year to May 2015.

Monday, June 22nd 2015, 12:00AM

by Miriam Bell

According to new Statistics New Zealand data, this was the highest ever annual inflow of migrants.

Further, for the last 10 months new annual gain records have been set each month.

The May 2015 net gain of 5,100 migrants was alone more than the net gains experienced in some past years.

While the May 2015 figure was slightly down on January 2015’s migration peak of 5,500, net migration has been fluctuating around these levels for the last nine months.

The increased net gain was, again, driven by more arrivals (up 15% on the May 2014 year) and fewer departures (down 10% on the May 2014 year).

All regions had a net gain of international migrants in the May 2015 year.

But Auckland led the way (26,600), followed by Canterbury (6,400), and Waikato (2,300).

In yet another sign that the strong demand for Auckland housing isn’t going to let up any time soon, over half of migrants planned to move to the Auckland region.

Westpac senior economist Felix Delbruck said they had pencilled in a modest pull-back in arrivals of foreign migrants - given recent signs the economy is coming off the boil.

But there was no sign of that in this month's data, he said.

“Ongoing strong migration suggests that the domestic economy still has a fair degree of momentum behind it.”

Net immigration also continues to be boosted by low flows of New Zealanders across the Tasman.

Delbruck said that departures are close to post-2003 lows and the number of people returning are not far from recent record highs.

“We do expect the monthly pace of net immigration to start moderating later this year, given that the relativities between Australia and New Zealand have started to move back in Australia's favour.

“However, we don’t expect a serious migration slowdown until Australia's job market shows significant improvement and the Canterbury rebuild shows clear signs of winding down - which is unlikely to happen before next year.”

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