When New Zealand opened its borders after the pandemic, separations began immediately. The sense of loss was constant for Kirsty Frame, a 24-year-old journalist who was then working for the country’s national broadcaster in Wellington.
“It was farewell dinner after farewell dinner, I was quitting drinking after drinking and I think it started to take a toll.”
For him, the beauty of the city came from its people. “If it was my community that made Wellington such a great place to live and work, and I feel like we don’t have that here now and there are far fewer people my age, what would I want to do?”
He considered moving to Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, but heard that it was also empty. He was thinking of London, but England seemed so far away. He eventually moved to Melbourne in mid-2023.
The flow out of New Zealand has accelerated since then. As cost-of-living pressures mount and residents grapple with limited job opportunities, record numbers of people are leaving the country. Provisional figures from Statistics NZ show a net loss of 56,500 citizens through April, an increase of 12,000 on the previous record.
Separate figures showed half of those leaving New Zealand had recently moved to Australia. Experts now fear a poor economic outlook could mean departing Kiwis may not come back.
“We can’t compete with Australian wages,” says David Cooper, director of immigration firm Malcolm Pacific. “Some people think New Zealand is going backwards, so they’re voting with their feet.”
In New Zealand, Frame says, it “felt like bad news after bad news” and in Melbourne she found a higher-paying job in communications and a lower-rent flat.
“I could be happy here for a long time. I think I’ll be here for the long run.”
‘The grass looks a lot greener’ in Australia
New Zealand has a tradition of young residents traveling for overseas experiences. According to Gareth Kiernan, chief forecaster at economic consultancy Infometrics, one of the reasons why the recent surge has reached record levels is a backlog of people traveling abroad who have postponed their plans due to travel restrictions and uncertainty amid the pandemic.
Among them is Joshua Scott, who survived the pandemic in Wellington and then decided to move to England. European adventures and the prospect of a bigger city were calling and the 29-year-old settled in east London last year and found a job in healthcare.
The change has become easier as more New Zealanders make a similar move. “I haven’t made many new friends here other than meeting people I know from Wellington,” he says.
But much of the record flow from New Zealand is also due to Australia’s growing attractiveness, according to Cooper and Kiernan. With New Zealand on the brink of a recent economic recession, Keirnan says many citizens have a perception that the cost of living is lower and salaries are higher in Australia, which could lead to more permanent changes.
“This is very much in favor of people crossing the Tasman because the grass looks a lot greener,” he says.
Emily Partridge is one of those who recently left New Zealand in search of opportunity. The 26-year-old, who grew up in Dunedin, made a professional calculation when the clothing company he worked for was sold to new owners.
“I was working in a relatively small industry in a small country,” he says. “I would look five or 10 years out and think: I’m not sure how much growth there will be in the future.”
Earlier this year she decided to move to Sydney, where she worked for a perfume brand.
“In New Zealand you can either work for a great company and get paid quite poorly, or you can work in a less exciting but well-paying job. “I can do both because the economy is better in Australia.”
Fears New Zealanders won’t return
Geologist Maia Vieregg, 26, graduated from university last year and struggled to find work in Wellington or elsewhere in the country. He felt “cynical and hopeless” about New Zealand’s future when several conservative parties unseated New Zealand’s former progressive government in the last election.
He had never planned to go abroad, but this combination pushed him to consider new options. In January, Vieregg moved to Newcastle, a few hours north of Sydney, where he found a job with a mining company that paid far better than anything he had back home. He finds it difficult to adapt to Australia.
“New Zealand is a pretty simple place,” he says, compared to the materialism of Australia. He plans to eventually return home, but he doesn’t expect it to happen anytime soon.
Cooper worries that the exodus could worsen the country’s already severe skills shortage.
“Kiwis leaving in record numbers is not hopeless and anachronistic. “They are young and talented people,” he says.
“These are people with good qualifications, good skills. “It is difficult to attract the highly skilled people we need to replace those who leave.”
Kiernan agrees. “If we cannot keep people here because the economy is not doing well and the cost of living is very high, this will have a very negative impact on our economic situation.”
For most young travelers, the appeal of having children will likely be the driving force that brings them home. Partridge does not expect to return to New Zealand unless she decides to have children; Scott will also return when he’s ready to start a family.
Meanwhile, Frame says: “What could bring me back could be the feeling of missing my family or the beginning of a new chapter in my life. Or I just feel homesick for the country and its smallness.
By the way, he doesn’t even need to return to New Zealand to enjoy home.
“There are so many New Zealanders here, it’s a bit ridiculous,” says Frame. “Encountering people from Wellington here is an almost daily occurrence.”