Record-shattering numbers of young people leaving New Zealand

Wellington’s Sky Stadium can seat 34,500 people. If you took every Kiwi in their 20s who has left New Zealand in the past year and packed them in, you’d fill every seat – and still have a crowd of over 10,000 standing outside.
Data compiled by Infometrics shows a meteoric rise in overseas migration, led largely by under-30s. And while this is offset by even higher numbers of migrant arrivals, those migrants aren’t settling into the cities vacated by young Kiwis. The result is a brain drain of unprecedented scale, with every month of 2024 breaking records, more than doubling the usual rate of young departures.