The numbers tell two different stories
Stats NZ released its February 2026 international migration data today and the headline figure is dramatic: annual net migration of 25,200, down from a record 135,500 in October 2023. That is an 81 percent collapse in barely two years.
But dig into the composition and the political narrative starts to fray. Annual migrant arrivals were 136,200, down just 1 percent from a year earlier. The arrivals tap has barely moved. What changed is departures: 111,100 migrants left in the year to February 2026, after provisionally peaking at 120,500 in mid-2025. Net migration is being propped up by fewer people leaving, not by a structured shift toward higher-skilled inflows.
For employers, this distinction matters enormously. The pool of available migrant labour already in New Zealand is shrinking as people leave, while tighter visa settings restrict who can enter to replace them.
What the government actually tightened
In April 2024, Immigration Minister Erica Stanford announced sweeping changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa: English language requirements for lower-skilled roles, mandatory Work and Income advertising, maximum stays cut from five to three years, and a new three-year experience requirement. She described the previous government’s removal of checks and balances as “irresponsible and unsustainable.”
Sector-specific pathways were wound back too. In 2024, the work-to-residency pathway for truck and bus drivers was closed after 3,000 truck drivers and nearly 1,000 bus drivers had been brought in. Plans to add 11 construction roles to the Green List were cancelled as demand softened.
The enforcement posture has since hardened. Stanford has warned that employers will lose accreditation if they don’t engage with MSD in good faith, citing data that around 17 percent of job checks for lower-skilled roles did not meet engagement requirements. Her implicit argument: with 20,000 more New Zealanders unemployed since accredited work visas launched in 2022, employers should exhaust the domestic pool first.
Domestic labour cannot fill these gaps
The logic sounds clean. The reality is structural. In April 2024, then-EMA Head of Advocacy Alan McDonald warned that the changes would hit sectors including truck driving, health care, and construction, noting that “our population is aging rapidly, is highly educated and we are losing many young people to Australia”. McDonald argued that “making it harder for motivated workers to come into New Zealand means they will go somewhere else”.
Immigration lawyer Elly Fleming flagged in 2024 that employers in seafood processing, aged care, hospitality, meat processing, agriculture, construction, and transport would struggle to fill roles under the new settings.
The labour market data confirms the mismatch. In November 2025, Jason Cherrington, chief executive of Accordant Group, said “net migration has seen skilled talent leave our shores and that capability hasn’t been replaced”. He described a bifurcated market: high volumes of applications for lower-skilled roles from underemployed migrants already here, alongside genuine shortages at the skilled end. MBIE’s March 2025 data shows Asian worker underutilisation at 11.9 percent, up 2.6 percentage points year-on-year.
Meanwhile, Mainfreight managing director Don Braid confirmed in November 2025 that the company had frozen hiring and continued to see people leaving for Australia.
Policy instability is the hidden cost
Perhaps the most revealing admission came from Stanford herself in 2024: “Next year, I might be saying loosen them again”. For any employer making a multi-year workforce plan, this is not reassuring.
The EMA’s McDonald put it directly in 2024: “Continual tinkering with the current settings is off-putting for potential skilled migrants considering New Zealand and confusing for employers who are trying to do the right thing”.
The government’s pivot toward higher-skilled migration is defensible as a long-term direction. But the transition is being managed as though aged care homes in Southland and restaurants in Queenstown can simply wait for domestic workers who do not exist and will not materialise at any unemployment rate. An 81 percent migration collapse makes for a tidy press release. For the sectors caught in the gap between political narrative and operational reality, the squeeze is only beginning.
Sources
- Stats NZ: International Migration February 2026 (2026-05-04)
- Interest.co.nz: Immigration Minister says net migration is falling as rules tighten (2024-04-12)
- RNZ: Immigration tightening might only be temporary – Erica Stanford (2024-04-08)
- EMA: Immigration changes might have unintended consequences (2024-04-10)
- Scoop: Kiwi Employers Will Find It More Onerous To Fill Lower-skilled Roles (2024-04-04)
- Newsroom: Labour market tightens as young job seekers find the going tough (2025-11-03)
- RNZ: Minister gets tough on employers choosing migrants over New Zealanders