Brad Olsen: Infometrics Principal Economist on the lack of information on the skills being lost due to migration

There's an unclear picture of what New Zealand's losing from people moving overseas. 

About 70 thousand Kiwis left the country last year. Of those, 38% were people aged 18 to 30.  

New Zealand had a net migration gain of 27,000 migrants in 2024, just a fraction of the 128,000 gained in 2023. 

Infometrics Principal Economist Brad Olsen told Mike Hosking while there's clear data on the people arriving, it's not the same story for departures.  

He says there's no strong evidence of what skills are leaving, only anecdotes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Migration numbers. Broadly, things are settling down. Still a lot
of people leaving. They are a lot of them, thirty
eight percent in factor eighteen to thirty year old. So
what do we make of it? Infometrics Principal economist Brad olsenback, well,
this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Mate, Good morning as well.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Migration numbers. How does this all end? Are we going
to end up exporting people or have we reached the bottom?
Do you reckon?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Well, it's a bit hard to tell at the moment. Certainly,
up until recently there had been a fair that we
would have more people that we would lose than would
come in over a year. The trends were certainly shifting back.
If you look back over the twenty twenty three year,
we had nearly one hundred and thirty thousand more people
moved to New Zealand then left on a long term basis.
Come through to the twenty twenty four calendar year and

(00:41):
that number was only around twenty seven thousand, So still positive,
but you know, one hundred thousand people different. The more
recent monthly figures are suggesting that although there's a much
lower number of people coming in months by month, it's
starting to pick up just a slight touch, which feels
a little bit odd given that the jobs market is
still pretty weak. To the unemployment rates up, it's harder

(01:03):
to find work. But I suspect talking to a few businesses,
that there are some parts of the economy where we
need some more skilled workers. And so although we haven't
got just you know, this huge inflow, there does seem
to be a little bit more activity happening there where
we're trying to sort of fill the gaps.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Here's what I worry about, beyond the numbers, they mainly
coming from China, the Philippines, et cetera. Are they filling
the gaps? And just because it's one out, one in,
are we replacing what we've lost.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's a bit tough to make that last assessment. Because
we have a pretty good idea of who's coming in
and the skills that they bring, we still don't have
really any good tracking on the sort of skills that
we're losing. There's a lot of anecdote and anecdata, but
sort of none of the sort of cold hard facts
that would normally rely on. I suspect that in general,
we are probably seeing most of those who are coming

(01:52):
in are coming in to fill the gaps. It's unusual
that we'd be sort of at the moment that New
Zealand businesses would be struggling with rolls across the board,
and so generally they won't try and issue a visa
for that. But I think there's also a question at
the moment around particularly our young people. We know that
there's a big flow out over to the likes of

(02:13):
Australia and similar and so although we might be seeing
the right or sort of similar trends at the moment
for where the economy is at in terms of sort
of reduced numbers, some of those below the surface trends.
The fact that we're losing a lot of New Zealanders
and also the fact that we've sort of seen such
a huge shift around in that foreign migration does make

(02:33):
you wonder about sort of where we go in the future.
Do we have sort of sustainable population growth or do
we just have these sort of massive, huge peaks and
troughs in our migration system and who knows how to
plan for that?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
All right, br I appreciate the expertise. As always, for
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