Why New Zealanders are emigrating in record numbers

"Ditch the winter chill” and “expand your horizons in sunny South East Queensland!” reads one newspaper advert, luring New Zealand’s health-care workers towards a new life in Australia. “Warmer days and higher pays”, enthused another, last year, from the Australian state’s police service. Kiwis who chose “policing in paradise” could look forward to 300 days of annual sunshine and a A$20,000 ($12,500) relocation bonus, it declared.

For many New Zealanders that is an easy sell. They are leaving their country in record numbers. Almost 129,000 residents emigrated last year—40% above the pre-pandemic average for this century. It is not a case of last in, first out. The majority of those leaving were New Zealanders, rather than immigrants returning home, creating a net loss of 47,000 citizens.

New Zealand, though a settler country, is also shaped by emigration. Its small economy and relative lack of opportunity have long driven young New Zealanders towards what they call the “overseas experience”, fanning fears of brain drain. Proportionate to its population of 5.3m, it has one of the largest diasporas in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Emigration ebbs and flows: the last spike occurred in 2012, near the end of the financial crisis. As the pandemic raged, many expats returned to hunker behind closed borders, but the outflow quickly resumed. Recently, New Zealand has been in a rut. The economy is in recession and unemployment has risen. Outgoing Kiwis grumble about costly housing and a crime surge.

Unlike most, they have an alternative when times get tough: they are free to live and work in Australia, and vice versa. Almost 15% of them are now based “across the ditch”. It is not just that Australia’s economy has weathered the cost-of-living crisis better. The income gap between the pair has been growing for decades. Adjusted for purchasing power, Australia’s per person GDP is about a third higher than New Zealand’s. Its pensions are more generous, and its centre-left Labor government has made it easier for Kiwis to get passports and benefits. By comparison, New Zealand is “a sinking boat”, says one transplant on a Facebook group for Kiwi expats. Australia is “best for [an] easy life”, writes another.

In the past, fears of brain drain have proved overblown. Young expats have generally returned, and governments have offset losses by letting in immigrants from countries such as India and China. The result was a “brain exchange”, says Paul Spoonley, a sociologist at New Zealand’s Massey University. But there is a risk of that changing, he argues. First, he says, it is no longer just young New Zealanders who are leaving, but more experienced professionals and extended families. Second, inward immigration is now slowing. After a post-pandemic spike, it plunged by around a third last year, though the population is still growing. Christopher Luxon, the prime minister, says the solution is “to build a long-term proposition where New Zealanders actually choose to stay”. But that has not proved easy. In 2009 John Key, then prime minister, set out to “match Australia by 2025”. In Wellington, the capital, some now joke that a more realistic goal would be to “beat Fiji by 2050”.