New Zealand has been voted the second worst country in the world to move to, according to a survey of immigrants encompassing most regions of the world. The survey, by the expatriate networking organisation InterNations, collated the responses of nearly 12,000 immigrants, living in 181 countries. It found that Mexico tops the list of the best country to live as an expat, while New Zealand ranked second worst, beating only Kuwait.
Survey respondents ranked their new countries based on criteria such as cost of living, safety, bureaucracy and quality of life. While New Zealand ranked 51 out of 52, its Trans-Tasman neighbour Australia received a credible ninth place, with people living there feeling that, overall, they receive fair compensation for their work, among other positive factors.
New Zealand’s 51st place in the survey was mostly due to lower wages and a high cost of living. In fact, when it came to the personal finance measures in the survey, the country was the worst performer out of all: half of respondents said their disposable household income was not enough to lead a comfortable life, as opposed to 28 per cent globally.
New Zealand’s 51st place in the survey was mostly due to lower wages and a high cost of living
Overall, 35 per cent of expats said they were unhappy with the cost of living in their country, but dissatisfaction leapt to 75 per cent when it came to New Zealand, making it the worst country to move to in terms of personal finance.
New Zealand did not fare well when it came to working life, with respondents stating they do not feel that they are paid fairly. They also reported concerns about a ‘growing divide between the rich and poor’.
The findings, to a large extent, lay bare the effects of structural changes that have been taking place for years. New Zealand has a very high proportion of what is referred to as ‘nonstandard work,’ and a large ‘precariate’ work force: too many hours, hours changed without notice, no idea whether there will be work tomorrow or how many months a job will last, low and fluctuating pay, temporary contracts.
Nearly 40 per cent of New Zealand businesses employ from 11 to 50 per cent of their workers as ‘temps,’ casuals, fixed terms or contractors according to a 2021 study by Auckland University of Technology. In the past five years, there’s been a 20 per cent increase in the number of people holding down two jobs. Over 190,000 people are in temporary contracts, earning on average 20 per cent less than permanents. This is a glaring example of a trend towards precarious work internationally, fuelled by the power of global supply chains and the trend to outsourcing.
New Zealand’s employment protections are the 11th weakest in the OECD. For temporary workers they are the 4th weakest. New Zealanders work some of the longest hours in the developed world. While the employment rate is high, for many the quality of that work is low. Wages and salaries are failing to keep pace with the cost of living, most acutely for lower paid workers who have been getting far smaller raises than the highest paid for two decades. From warehouses to construction sites to academia and the offices of government departments, insecurity has become a feature of the New Zealand economy. Even as many people are working harder, the job is simply worth less than it used to be.
The report is so confronting because it undermines the perceptions New Zealanders have of their society. Egalitarianism is a quintessential element of New Zealand’s national identity, stretching back to its origins as a colony as far from the imperial apron strings of Britain as it was possible to be geographically, and needing hardy folk in an egalitarian, almost utilitarian spirit to tame the land. It was then known, in the late nineteenth century, as ‘the social laboratory of the world’ for its social reforms, then as ‘the land of milk and honey’ in the sleepy nineteen fifties and sixties, when farming was the backbone of the nation, there were sixty million sheep and only two and a half million people, and the culture was limited to ‘rugby, racing and beer.’
For modern-day New Zealand to be voted the second worst country in the world to move to, due to lower wages and the high cost of living making it too difficult to lead a comfortable life, touches a fairly large existential nerve.
These dramatic findings also occur at a time when New Zealand is being run by a left-wing government. It will be a lot harder for New Zealanders to reconcile Jacinda Ardern’s promises of social justice with the disparities experienced by the survey’s respondents.
As it happens, post-budget polling implies a swing of 450,000 median voters away from the government to the opposition, a 15 per cent swing that if borne out in next year’s election, would be the biggest swing since 1935, when Ardern’s Labour party first won an election. Based on the recent polling, Ardern and her cabinet colleagues are very much part of the precariate, with a comparable degree of job security.
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