New Zealand receives record numbers of foreign workers

By Tracy Withers

FOREIGNERS are flocking to New Zealand in record numbers after the nation loosened immigration rules to plug labor shortages.

A record net 98,391 nonNew Zealand citizens arrived in the year through April 30, while 26,061 citizens departed, Statistics New Zealand said Tuesday in Wellington. That saw net immigration rise to 72,330, the biggest annual gain since July 2020 and up from a revised 65,755 in the 12 months through March.

New Zealand urgently needs a range of workers, from nurses and doctors to mechanics, engineers and construction staff, to ease labor shortages that became acute when the border was shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. The nation’s central bank said last month that the immigration surge reflects pent-up demand and should soon start to wane.

“This is a positive sign that we are getting the workers our economy needs,” said Immigration Minister Michael Wood. “We know that many industries have been calling out for workers as the global labor shortage bites, and we want our immigration settings to be responsive to that.”

While the influx could reduce upward pressure on wages, it may also fuel demand for goods and services, leaving its impact on inflation unclear.

In the month of April, net immigration slowed to 5,785 from more than 13,000 in each of the two previous months. Economists suggest that is a sign of an approaching peak in arrivals.

“The data signals a sizable desire to move to our corner of the world,” said Mary Jo Vergara, senior economist at Kiwibank in Auckland. “We may see a continued increase in non-New Zealand migrant flows ahead, but we think we’re nearing peak load.”

The Reserve Bank, which brought an end to its rate-tightening cycle in May, said it will continue to assess incoming data including the mix of immigrants. They include workers in the country for as little as two years but also those with families who settle and buy houses.

“It’s that kind of mix that you need to have an understanding of, and immigration data has historically been quite volatile as well,” Assistant Governor Karen Silk told Bloomberg in an interview last month.

In the year through April, there were 144,263 non-New Zealand citizen arrivals offset by 45,872 non-citizen departures. The level of non-citizen arrivals is higher than the 60,200 average in the five years prior to April 2020, the statistics agency said. Bloomberg News

“Did it make the full transition (to digital) that the (New York) Times has made?” Rosenstiel said. “By all measures, you would have to say no. And the last couple of years have been a lot harder.”

The Post went through rounds of layoffs late last year and in early 2023, and saw cutbacks including the ending of its Sunday magazine. The pandemic and inflation has sorely impacted the news industry; the Los Angeles Times said last week it was cutting some 10% of its newsroom staff, and NPR said the same thing earlier this year. Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, has laid off hundreds of journalists.

Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan leaves newspaper after 9 years at helm

By David Bauder AP Media Writer

WASHINGTON Post publisher and chief executive Fred Ryan, who presided over explosive growth during the Trump years but couldn’t avert the effects of the industry’s downturn over the past two years, said Monday he’s leaving the publication after nearly a decade.

Ryan, 68, will lead the newly formed Center on Public Civility at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the newspaper said. He’ll be replaced at the Post on an interim basis by Patty Stonesifer, formerly chief executive of the Gates Foundation and a member of the Amazon board, newspaper owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said.

Ryan, the former CEO and a founder of Politico, oversaw the appointment of Sally Buzbee— the former Associated Press executive editor—as the Post’s top editor, replacing Marty Baron, in 2021.

A year after Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013, Ryan was appointed to lead The Washington Post, taking over from Katharine Weymouth—granddaughter of legendary longtime CEO Katharine Graham—and ending the Graham family’s eight-decade tenure as leaders of the largest newspaper in the nation’s capital.

Under the motto “Democracy dies in darkness,” the Post aggressively covered the ascension and presidency of Donald Trump with flair, essentially doubling its newsroom staff and sharply boosting its digital footprint.

While it’s never easy to be at the top of such a large organization, “if you step back and look at the last nine years, it has been an excellent period at The Washington Post and for the journalism it holds dear,” said Neil Brown, president of the Poynter Institute, a news industry think tank.

“He took an exceptional brand and modernized it with vibrant and important journalism,” Brown said.

If the Post benefitted from a “Trump bump” like other news organizations, a Washingtonbased news organization was also susceptible to the problems that would come with that ending, said Tom Rosenstiel, a veteran Washington journalist and now professor at the University of Maryland.

Its list of digital subscribers grew to three million at the end of the Trump administration but has since dropped to over 2.5 million. Its digital site had 139 million visitors in March 2020, and was down to 58 million in December 2022, according to the Post.

Ryan angered several at the Post late last year when he refused to take questions about layoffs from his own company’s journalists at a newsroom meeting.

Ryan told the Post that his departure has nothing to do with the recent downturn.

“I have no doubt that the high-quality journalism of the standard of The Washington Post will always be successful,” he said.

Ryan has led the Post “through a period of innovation, journalistic excellence and growth,” Bezos said in a memo to the newspaper’s staff. “His focus on the intersection of journalism and technology has been on great benefit to readers and has laid the foundation for future growth.”

With Bezos bankrolling the Post, the organization and a new leader would appear to have ownership in place committed to keeping quality intact, Brown said.

Ryan also served as chief of staff to Reagan after he left the presidency until 1995 and is currently chair of the board of trustees at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.

“If you think the news business is a challenge, taking on the challenge of bringing civility to public debates might be the only job Fred Ryan can find that would be potentially more daunting,” Rosenstiel said of Ryan’s destination.