New Zealand Visa Statistics: Key Insights & Arrival Trends for 2025

Staying up to date with New Zealand visa statistics is essential for employers, HR professionals, and anyone engaged in international recruitment or compliance. Each month, Immigration New Zealand releases data that helps organisations make informed hiring decisions, adjust onboarding workflows, and maintain compliance with right-to-work legislation.

In this analysis, we breakdown the most recent visa arrival numbers available (as of September 30 2025) to help you navigate the evolving landscape. We also recommend how your organisation can leverage data-driven insights—backed by vSure’s automation and monitoring solutions—to ensure right to work compliance.

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Key Visa Statistics for the Year to September 30, 2025

The 12 months concluding in September 2025 saw a total of 3,655,305 arrivals in New Zealand. These arrivals can be disected across these high level visa types:

• 1,747,866 visitor visas (for whom have no work rights);
• 1,092,537 Aussies, who have equivalent work rights to kiwis;
• 527,824 residents with full work rights;
• 176,101 work visa holders;
• 89,884 Student Visa holders, with restricted work rights;
• 21,093 being made up of Limited, Diplomatic, Military and Exemptions;

These numbers reflect the ongoing trend of strong visitor volumes. Understanding the makeup of these arrivals is crucial for those overseeing workforce compliance and employment risk.

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Monthly New Zealand Arrivals: Trends and Patterns

The latest data shows continued post COVID shutdown rocovery in NZ arrivals. As demonstrated by this chart of monthly arrivals by visa type over the last decade, things appear to be normalising with an upward trend.

This bodes well for the tourism industry as well as New Zealand employers looking to tap into non-citizen labour. This includes the key industries such as Hospitality, Aged Care, Farming and Food Production.

Looking at the key Student Visa segment, where the NZ government is strategically aiming for growth, we see the seasonality of arrivals, a trend back to "normal", pre-COVID levels and a upward trendline in recent years.

Breaking the post COVID shutdown period out from the 10 year view, painst a different perspective:

If your operations depend on international hiring or student engagement, understanding monthly shifts helps plan for fluctuations in eligible candidates and respond to any regulatory developments.

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What These Trends Mean for Employers

For New Zealand employers these statistics underscore the opportunity to leverage the non-citizen portion of the labour market. This brings with it compliance implications as highlighted in our atrticles here and here. And this is where vSure can help:

• Streamlined Compliance: Proactively verifying employee work rights with every new hire, and scheduling rechecks for ongoing placements.
• Ongoing Visa Monitoring: Leveraging solutions like the vSure Work Rights Platform to automate visa checks, get instant alerts on status changes, and maintain a secure audit trail.
• Integration & Efficiency: Integrating right to work compliance into onboarding, rtostering and payroll systems streamlines processes and reduces legal and reputational risk.

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Accessing the Latest Official Data

Immigration New Zealand updates its official statistics regularly. As of now, data extends through September 2025.

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Need help integrating work rights compliance into your business?

Contact vSure for tailored advice on streamlining your right to work compliance—whether you need individual checks, bulk onboarding, or seamless API integration.

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