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Speaker 1: Migration numbers. Broadly, things are settling down. Still a lot

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Speaker 1: of people leaving. They are a lot of them, thirty

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Speaker 1: eight percent in factor eighteen to thirty year old. So

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Speaker 1: what do we make of it? Infometrics Principal economist Brad olsenback, well,

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Speaker 1: this morning.

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Speaker 2: Mate, Good morning as well.

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Speaker 1: Migration numbers. How does this all end? Are we going

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Speaker 1: to end up exporting people or have we reached the bottom?

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Speaker 1: Do you reckon?

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Speaker 2: Well, it's a bit hard to tell at the moment. Certainly,

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Speaker 2: up until recently there had been a fair that we

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Speaker 2: would have more people that we would lose than would

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Speaker 2: come in over a year. The trends were certainly shifting back.

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Speaker 2: If you look back over the twenty twenty three year,

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Speaker 2: we had nearly one hundred and thirty thousand more people

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Speaker 2: moved to New Zealand then left on a long term basis.

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Speaker 2: Come through to the twenty twenty four calendar year and

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Speaker 2: that number was only around twenty seven thousand, So still positive,

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Speaker 2: but you know, one hundred thousand people different. The more

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Speaker 2: recent monthly figures are suggesting that although there's a much

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Speaker 2: lower number of people coming in months by month, it's

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Speaker 2: starting to pick up just a slight touch, which feels

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Speaker 2: a little bit odd given that the jobs market is

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Speaker 2: still pretty weak. To the unemployment rates up, it's harder

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Speaker 2: to find work. But I suspect talking to a few businesses,

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Speaker 2: that there are some parts of the economy where we

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Speaker 2: need some more skilled workers. And so although we haven't

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Speaker 2: got just you know, this huge inflow, there does seem

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Speaker 2: to be a little bit more activity happening there where

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Speaker 2: we're trying to sort of fill the gaps.

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Speaker 1: Here's what I worry about, beyond the numbers, they mainly

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Speaker 1: coming from China, the Philippines, et cetera. Are they filling

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Speaker 1: the gaps? And just because it's one out, one in,

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Speaker 1: are we replacing what we've lost.

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Speaker 2: It's a bit tough to make that last assessment. Because

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Speaker 2: we have a pretty good idea of who's coming in

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Speaker 2: and the skills that they bring, we still don't have

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Speaker 2: really any good tracking on the sort of skills that

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Speaker 2: we're losing. There's a lot of anecdote and anecdata, but

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Speaker 2: sort of none of the sort of cold hard facts

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Speaker 2: that would normally rely on. I suspect that in general,

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Speaker 2: we are probably seeing most of those who are coming

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Speaker 2: in are coming in to fill the gaps. It's unusual

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Speaker 2: that we'd be sort of at the moment that New

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Speaker 2: Zealand businesses would be struggling with rolls across the board,

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Speaker 2: and so generally they won't try and issue a visa

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Speaker 2: for that. But I think there's also a question at

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Speaker 2: the moment around particularly our young people. We know that

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Speaker 2: there's a big flow out over to the likes of

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Speaker 2: Australia and similar and so although we might be seeing

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Speaker 2: the right or sort of similar trends at the moment

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Speaker 2: for where the economy is at in terms of sort

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Speaker 2: of reduced numbers, some of those below the surface trends.

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Speaker 2: The fact that we're losing a lot of New Zealanders

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Speaker 2: and also the fact that we've sort of seen such

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Speaker 2: a huge shift around in that foreign migration does make

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Speaker 2: you wonder about sort of where we go in the future.

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Speaker 2: Do we have sort of sustainable population growth or do

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Speaker 2: we just have these sort of massive, huge peaks and

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Speaker 2: troughs in our migration system and who knows how to

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Speaker 2: plan for that?

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Speaker 1: All right, br I appreciate the expertise. As always, for

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