ONLY CHARTS
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1. New Zealand’s composite PMI - the PCI - fell sharply in March, reaching a new low and unwinding the recent improvement. This follows the sharp retracement in QSBO activity indicators for Q1.
2. The NZ bureaucracy’s job vacancies measure also fell sharply in March, with weakness broadly based across occupations.
3. New Zealand’s (preliminary) net immigration for February showed an increase but these data have been volatile and prone to sizeable revisions. Stepping back, net immigration in NZ has clearly moderated.
4. While most of the change in New Zealand’s net immigration is driven by non-NZ citizens, the number of kiwi departures remains elevated.
5. The number of inbound visitors to New Zealand remains well below pre-COVID levels.
In contrast, kiwis are now travelling abroad on short-term trips in the same numbers as before the pandemic (that shows up in both consumption and imports in the national accounts).
6. This is a common sense way to think about neutral policy rates from the RBNZ.
