What is net migration?
Net long-term migration over 12 months was 20,348 (Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation, Year to Jul 2026).
Updated
Long-term migrant arrivals, departures and net migration over the 12 months ending in each month, the headline measure Stats NZ reports, from December 2001.
Totals including recent months are provisional and will be revised. Monthly sums of rounded estimates may differ slightly from Stats NZ's published annual totals.
Net migration subtracts departures from arrivals. A positive net figure can sit alongside a large number leaving, because the arrivals are larger. The citizenship and visa breakdowns answer different questions about those movements.
Read the period beside each number before comparing it with another figure. A monthly observation, a quarterly result and a financial year cover different spans of time. The latest release can also revise earlier observations. The chart and downloads keep the published periods so you can check which figures are being compared. A change in arrivals and departures describes what happened during that period; it does not by itself explain why it happened or identify the effect of a government policy. Definitions and coverage matter as much as the size of a change.
Net migration, 12 months was 9,593 in Year to Jul 2025, a year earlier.
The earliest observation on the same basis was 30,265 in Year to Dec 2001.
Arrivals and departures: definitions
Long-term migrant arrivals, departures and net migration over the 12 months ending in each month, the headline measure Stats NZ reports, from December 2001.
- Totals including recent months are provisional and will be revised.
- Monthly sums of rounded estimates may differ slightly from Stats NZ's published annual totals.
Show the figures
| Period | Net migration, 12 months (number) |
|---|---|
| Year to Jul 2026 | 20,348 |
| Year to Jun 2026 | 17,479 |
| Year to May 2026 | 16,325 |
| Year to Apr 2026 | 15,317 |
| Year to Mar 2026 | 14,051 |
| Year to Feb 2026 | 12,542 |
| Year to Jan 2026 | 12,980 |
| Year to Dec 2025 | 11,470 |
| Year to Nov 2025 | 11,148 |
| Year to Oct 2025 | 10,935 |
| Year to Sep 2025 | 10,114 |
| Year to Aug 2025 | 9,232 |
| Year to Jul 2025 | 9,593 |
| Year to Jun 2025 | 10,184 |
| Year to May 2025 | 10,287 |
| Year to Apr 2025 | 11,771 |
| Year to Mar 2025 | 13,690 |
| Year to Feb 2025 | 17,413 |
| Year to Jan 2025 | 19,507 |
| Year to Dec 2024 | 23,747 |
12-month periods ending in the month shown. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation. Lines break at basis changes and missing periods.
Arrivals and departures: questions for your AI
Download the data, attach it in your assistant, then paste the prompt.
The attached CSV is Migration: arrivals, departures and net (12-month totals), from Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation. Answer: What is net migration? Name the unit and period. Use only directly supported observations. Definitions: Long-term migrant arrivals, departures and net migration over the 12 months ending in each month, the headline measure Stats NZ reports, from December 2001. Limits: Totals including recent months are provisional and will be revised. Monthly sums of rounded estimates may differ slightly from Stats NZ's published annual totals.
More questions about arrivals and departures
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Arrivals and departures: sources
The source publication, licence and snapshot used to build this page.
Calculated by NZ in Numbers from Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, International migration: estimated migration by direction.
- Organisation
- Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa; NZ in Numbers calculation, NZ in Numbers calculation
- Licence
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Calculated by NZ in Numbers from the source datasets listed; please also credit those sources.
- Snapshot
- SHA256
- 4c22b16cf4679ce28e13bee1843fe3b2cadd7f0a982e8963da58d9b4cb7bfb3e
- Retrieved
- 10 October 2026
- Formula
- 12-month total = sum of the monthly estimates for the 12 months ending in the month shown
- Inputs
- migration-totals, migration.arrivals. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, International migration: estimated migration by direction. Content hash: a6365350af4de58f8a0dce51c9476e4e3b7115d2829afdefd7c8ea46d657f8ee.
- migration-totals, migration.departures. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, International migration: estimated migration by direction. Content hash: a6365350af4de58f8a0dce51c9476e4e3b7115d2829afdefd7c8ea46d657f8ee.
- migration-totals, migration.net. Source: Stats NZ Tatauranga Aotearoa, International migration: estimated migration by direction. Content hash: a6365350af4de58f8a0dce51c9476e4e3b7115d2829afdefd7c8ea46d657f8ee.