Migration, births and deaths forecasts 2025 to 2056
Projections for how domestic and international migration will affect the region's populations, and
the natural changes due to births and deaths.
Migrations by area
The dip in net migration in the short term is a flow on effect from pent up emigration demand following COVID-19 border closures plus the effects of negative economic conditions (e.g. rising unemployment) on the back of a period of exceptionally high inflation (including in house prices), rising crown debt, a period of rising interest rates, and a record difference in unemployment rates between New Zealand and Australia. This will pass.
Our projections to 2056 are based on a running hundreds of simulations that calculate forcasts for population, employment, migration and other factors. As we move further into the future, there is more uncertainty and variability around what the actual population may be.
The outcomes of our simulations give us range of possible populations into the future. These ranges are divided into percentiles: 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 95th. These percentiles are shown on the graphs.
For example, a value for the 25th percentile means that we found for 25 percent of our simulations, the projected population is below this value, and 75 percent of simulations are above that value.
Summary table
The table below shows the data for the 50th percentile.