Tim Wilson

call sort of longer term averages look there was a there was a bunch of downward revisions to previous release data that's one of the features of migration data and always will be yep 3,370 people that's the March number annual migration 24,000 or just over 24,000 you go back a year Mike that was 14,000 so there's a trend in place we're definitely seeing a trend

And why is it lifting?

It's lifting because there's a reduction in the number of New Zealanders leaving, which sort of, I don't know what you think, but anecdotally it sort of feels right, doesn't it?

There's less people going.

Arrivals are staying pretty constant.

A 10-year average for permanent long-term migration is 49,000.

So we're somewhere beneath that.

But if you take a longer period and you go back and include the early 2000s, that average sits at 31,000.

And if you sort of annualize the last few months, so you look at the current trend, we're pretty much there.

So we're pretty much getting back to what's a sort of a normalized situation.

Look at the source of migrants, still very much an Asian focus, China, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka.

The China numbers look robust.

They lifted for the 12 months versus the 12 months to March 25.

Those other countries sort of tailing off a little bit.

It's kind of hard to get a handle on sort of what's the impact of the Middle East conflict is going to be on migration.

I mean, I think this global uncertainty could help Kiwis here, but traditionally our employment market, that's been a factor.

It's not very strong at the moment.

confidence is low but you know it feels like we are a safe port in a turbulent world yet the bottom line though is we're moving back to a more sort of normal migration situation that button like what we do have to do is look at the tourism numbers because I think they look pretty good it's one of the big tailwinds for our economy what I agree and tourism is coming back it's going well three point one three million visitor arrivals and

That's 300,000 more than March 25.

So March 26, we're 95%-ish back to pre-COVID.