Photo / Greg Bowker
The grass is no longer greener in the Lucky Country with the latest migration figures showing a net gain of migrants from Australia for the first time in 24 years.
Statistics New Zealand has released the migration figures for the 12 months to October 2015, which show a record annual net gain of 62,500 people.
Of the people moving to New Zealand, 25,000 of them were coming here from Australia. There were 100 more people coming to New Zealand than leaving for Australia, the first net gain in migrants since the November 1991 year.
Two-thirds of the people moving here from Australia were New Zealand citizens.
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The net gain of 62,500 people resulted from a record 120,100 migrants arriving, and 57,600 people leaving New Zealand. Migrant arrivals increased by 12 per cent from the October 2014 year and migrant departures were down 3 per cent.
New migrant records have continually been set in the last 15 months, Statistics NZ said.
Three-quarters of the 14,300 people arriving in New Zealand from India had student visas. The next largest group of migrants coming to New Zealand were from the UK, where 13,400 arrived. About 80 per cent had work visas or New Zealand citizenships.
Chinese arrivals accounted for 10,800 people and less than half came here on student visas.
All regions across the country had a net gain of international migrants in the October 2015 year. Auckland had the greatest gain, with 29,000 new migrants. Canterbury followed with a net gain of 6,800, followed by Waikato, Wellington, Bay of Plenty, and Otago.
Just over half of all migrants who stated an address on their arrival card were moving to the Auckland region.
Westpac senior economist Satish Ranchhod said ongoing strength in arrivals would cause New Zealand's population growth rate to reach its highest pace since 1974.
"High population growth is helping to maintain a reasonable rate of GDP growth. But at the same time, the preponderance of people in the labour market is keeping wage growth lower than it would otherwise be," Ranchhod said in a statement.
"We expect that net immigration will remain strong for some time yet. But the current strength will eventually moderate.
"Many of those who arrived on student and temporary work visas will start to leave over the coming years. In addition, the New Zealand labour market has been softening, while Australia's has been picking up. If this continues, and there are indications it will, New Zealand will start to look like less of an attractive destination."
New Zealand welcomed a record 3.06 million short-term visitors in the latest year, up 9 percent from the year earlier. Of those, 1.31 million were from Australia, 335,400 from China and 237,700 from the US.
New Zealand residents also took a record 2.39 million overseas trips in the year through October, up 6 per cent from the year earlier. Almost half their trips were to Australia. For the month of October, New Zealand travellers took a record 217,000 overseas trips, up 5 per cent from the year earlier month and largely driven by holiday travellers to the UK during the final stages of the Rugby World Cup, Statistics NZ said.
View the Statistics NZ data here:
-- With BusinessDesk