The Great Kiwi Exodus

From Tokyo, Japan and New Plymouth, New Zealand – this is Down to Business English. With your hosts Skip Montreux and Samantha Vega.

Samantha, we have a pretty big update to deal with just at the beginning here. Okay. One of our stories that we reported on, our very first episode this season, was about Netflix buying Warner Bros. Discovery. I did see this. Yes. Well, at that time it was a done deal. It looked like Netflix was acquiring Warner Bros., but at the last minute Paramount Skydance came in with a higher offer and the Warner Bros. board of directors accepted it.

Yeah, David Ellison is like a dog with a bone on that one. He didn't give up there. So, $31 per share … er… was what they finally agreed on, which was a better agreement than they had previously struck with Netflix. Yeah. And Netflix, they had a chance to match that offer, but the er CEO of Netflix said, "Nah, no thank you." That's right. So now they own everything. The, er the Paramount Warner Bros. deal isn't just for the studios, it's for everything.

The streaming services, the TV stations, the whole shebang. That's right. 110 111 billion when it's all said and done. And that also means that now there's only like a small handful of er of the uber rich that own all of the media in North America. Mmm. What does that mean? It means scary. That's what it means. It's scary. But I guess everything, you know, it's er like Bob Dylan says, the times they are changing. I wonder how many of our listeners know who Bob Dylan is.

Oh, it was the movie, they should have seen the movie with er with er Chalamet. It was great. Oh, right, right. I have not seen the movie.

Well, speaking about how things are always changing, I saw a very interesting headline the other day about Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand. She emigrated to Australia. Is that true? Yes. Well, she left, she'd been in … in New York for a long time because she was doing a fellowship there at Harvard Kennedy School. So, that had wrapped up and then she decided her and Clark, er, Clark Gayford, her husband, er, they would move over to Australia.

To be honest, I'm not really surprised about it. Um, well, there's a quite a bit more opportunity over there. But also, just before she er resigned and through a lot of her prime ministership, she experienced so much vitriol … Hmm. … from er, certain members of the public here in New Zealand. And so, I can kind of see why she doesn't want to come back. Is that right? But she said it's just for the time being, that she'll be going. Yeah. Just for the time being.

Well, it seems to symbolize this greater trend that I have been reading about. About this mass exodus of the labor force from New Zealand overseas. Yes. And that's what I would like to talk about today on Down to Business English about this, er exodus from the country and the impact it is having on New Zealand society and the economy. Okay, let's do it. Yes, let's do it. Let's get D2B … Down to Business with The Great Kiwi Exodus. 40,033. There's a number for you.

That is the number of New Zealand citizens who left the country overseas in 2025. Well, considering that there's just over 5 million of us, that's actually quite a big number. Yeah. And it's having a huge impact on New Zealand society and economy. I can see that. And they went, are you talking about that number just going over to Australia or? No, actually that's a good question, that's … the total is 40,000. 60% however did end up in Australia.

Mmm. And the top three reasons why they are leaving the country are cost of living, better employment opportunities, and lifestyle changes. Yes, there is quite a bit of a brain drain that's happened from New Zealand over to Aussie, over the last … over the last couple of years, maybe a little bit more. I have a couple of friends that have just left recently.

Mm … um and last year one of they just moved their families over and a lot of the younger ones especially coming out of uni er which is and that's where the brain drain’s coming into it because we need those people to um boost up our economy and er yeah because we're … we're quite an aging population over here in Aotearoa. Aotearoa? What exactly is that? It's the Maori word for New Zealand. It's the original, it's the original name of the country.

Well, let me ask you, your friends, did they leave for, for work or did they leave for a better climate? Well, a little bit of both. They decided to leave as well, and I think this is important because um they were in their 30s. er they left, they didn't leave without getting jobs first, but it was actually quite easy for them to get jobs.

They just got jobs online before they went over, did the interviews online, and um they went while the kids had finished that school year and before they were moving on to a higher school. So it was a good time to move with the kids because it wouldn't be such a disruption to their … to their school year and because they were changing schools and going up to bigger, you know, from primary up until er intermediate school. So it wasn't going to be such a shakeup for them.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. Not so disruptive on the kids. But it is disruptive on the New Zealand education system. Yes, we have a huge shortage of teachers across the country. According to the Ministry of Education, they project a shortage of 1,250 teachers in the near future. Yes. What is that going to do to the education system and the quality of education? Well, now we're sitting at about 30 plus students per class… Too many … for one teacher.

So, especially if, er, the student is struggling in one way, shape, or form with certain topics, they're not going to get the specialized care that they need. That is not good. Bigger workloads for the teacher, poorer education for the students or not enough attention for them. It just does not result in a positive outcome. No, as quickly as we're training up teachers, they're just moving overseas because the money is better. Same goes for nursing as well.

A friend of mine's daughter moved over there after she graduated um … to become a full-fledged nurse because her … amount of money that she was making per hour was four to five times what she was making here in New Zealand. You cannot say no to a difference in salary like that. Nurses and doctors are leaving. So that impact on the health care system has ramifications. Mm. If you're waiting for surgery, you've got a huge wait ahead of you.

The number I saw was that there is currently a wait list exceeding 430,000 people. Mm. So we say don't get sick.

Well, hmm … Er, it's not just those sectors though it's pretty much across the board. Another thing is we get superior …. superannuation. So superannuation is er … is what hap … what we get when we retire. Mm hm. So employer contributions for … um that are higher and they accumulate a lot faster than we would here in New Zealand. So it's not just the young people that are going, it's also the middle-aged people and then even people are retiring as well.

So it is a problem on both ends of the work force. Older workers retiring combined with the younger workers, who should be replacing them, leaving the country. Yes. So it is really turning into a bit of a problem because in our education system we're training up new people, they are graduating and then they are just moving on to, most of the time sunnier shores in different countries to get more money and um a lot better career opportunities especially in industries like tech.

There was a study in 2025 that something like 26% of IT workers are strongly considering leaving the country for higher salaries and better opportunities overseas. And really, who can blame them? And if this trend continues, this brain drain of talent and exodus of labor continues, they are predicting that by 2045, New Zealand could be short 250,000 workers. Imagine that — a quarter of a million people.

With those kind of numbers, almost 100% of the income tax would be needed just to pay for health and pension. Wow. And considering, like I'd said before in the beginning, that we're just a population of just over 5 million. That is a huge number. Hmm. And if it's just going to pay for our health care, and what about all of the other infrastructure, our water, our power, our er roads, how are we going to pay for all of that?

Yeah. Many years ago, it was the young that would leave New Zealand for what they call an OE over here, an overseas experience. So, they'd leave for six months and go get some work and er or go backpacking or one of the other things, but they always made their way back to New Zealand. But now, it seems they seem to be going for a little bit longer than just an OE. Well, whatever the case, it seems like some hard decisions need to be made in the very near future for New Zealand to manage.

Well, If you could use me as an example, I left New Zealand when I was 6 years old. I was raised in Canada. I lived in Asia. I lived in different countries in the world. Decades later, I came back. And my auntie always said to me, "You have to come back to New Zealand. Everybody comes back home. Everybody comes back to Aotearoa, to the land of the long white cloud."

Well, and on that note, I think it is time for us to get D2V … Down to Vocabulary. The first word on today’s D2V list is the noun ‘exodus’. An exodus is a large number of people leaving a place, all at the same time. An exodus is not just a few people moving — it is a mass movement. Usually, it’s people leaving because something is pushing them out, like economic problems, or pulling them somewhere else, like better opportunities. Exactly. And that is how we used it in today’s report.

I said that there has been a mass exodus of workers leaving New Zealand for opportunities overseas. In other words, there has been a large number of New Zealanders leaving the country for better jobs and better opportunities. That’s right. In fact, we even used this word in the title of today’s episode — The Great Kiwi Exodus.

In a business context, we often use this word when talking about large numbers of people leaving, such as employees resigning after major changes, or customers moving to a competitor. Can you give us an example of that? Sure. “After the merger was announced, there was an exodus of senior staff who were unhappy about the new management structure.” Perfect. So again, a large number of experienced employees left the company in a short period of time. Yeah, great example.

The next item on today’s D2V list is the expression ‘a done deal’. When something is a done deal, it means it has already been agreed to and seems certain to happen. We use this expression when a decision, some kind of agreement, or an outcome looks final. It gives the idea that there is nothing left to discuss. In today’s introduction, when we were giving a brief update on the acquisition of Warner Bros., Skip said that, when we first reported

on the story, Netflix buying Warner Bros. looked like a done deal. In simpler terms, it seemed that acquisition had already been settled and that Netflix was definitely going to buy the company. But as we all know, it turned out not to be a done deal. No, it definitely wasn’t. Paramount Skydance came in at the last minute with a higher offer and that changed everything. This expression is so useful in business.

People often say something is a done deal when they are talking about a merger, a contract, or a negotiation that looks fully agreed on. And when you say something is not a done deal, you mean it is still uncertain or there is more work to do. For example, I could say something like, “This contract will not be a done deal until the buyer agrees to the final price.” Nothing is truly final until the paperwork is signed. Hmm. That is so true. Moving on, let’s look at the noun ‘vitriol’.

Vitriol is extremely mean, cruel, bitter, and you can just say hostile language. It is a very strong word, and it’s usually used when we are talking about someone receiving very harsh criticism or verbal abuse. It’s more than just negative comments — it suggests real anger and hostility In the introduction to today’s report, Samantha said that Jacinda Ardern, the former Kiwi Prime Minister, had experienced a lot of vitriol from some members of the New Zealand public. I did say that.

My main point was that she received a lot of very hateful and aggressive criticism from some people. Very disappointing, I must say. Vitriol is not nice. You often hear this word in politics, in the media, and sometimes in business too — especially when public reaction becomes very emotional or very hostile.