Immigration: With industries screaming out for workers, are New Zealand’s immigration settings right? – Newshub

There were lots of reasons for this, of course - boiling it down to a single factor is impossible.

But one of the big ones was our high levels of immigration: between 2010 and 2017, Aotearoa had a net influx of about 50,000 people every year.

These arrivals helped fill skills shortages, but critics say a failure to scale up infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population contributed to strain on the housing market and health system.

In addition, many low-skilled migrants were taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers.

During the 2017 election campaign, Labour promised something of an immigration reset: slicing the number of migrants coming in by 20,000 to 30,000 people a year to relieve the pressure on infrastructure. Bringing in a greater proportion of high-skilled workers in that lot would also develop a more high-value, high-wage economy.

Once elected, the party didn't have to do much to hit that target - Covid-19's arrival took care of it.

But now, five years on from getting into government, Labour is putting its immigration rebalancing into action.

But what does it mean for the economy?

"At a simple level, more people in an economy means more activity, more growth, more GDP," NZ Herald business editor-at-large Liam Dann says.

"The flipside is that GDP is a nice number to have growing, but per capita GDP is our personal wealth, and that didn't grow as much [in the first half of the 2010s].

"Also, if you've got a lot more people coming into the economy, you need to be investing in infrastructure - building more houses, your roads are getting filled up - and so that has to happen, and I guess you could make the case that it didn't happen fast enough."

Dann says during the early-to-mid-2010s, the country was relieved to be tracking in a positive economic direction, and perhaps ignored some of the warning signs that infrastructure and housing supply might not be coping with the relatively sudden influx of people until it was too late.

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Immigration: With industries screaming out for workers, are New Zealand's immigration settings right? - Newshub