New Zealand is more popular than ever, especially with people from China and the United States, the latest figures from Statistics New Zealand shows.

There were 177,000 visitor arrivals to New Zealand in June, up 9% compared to June 2014, and visitor arrivals totalled 2.99 million annually, up 7% from the previous year.

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China, Australia, and the United States contributed the biggest visitor increases for both the June month and year, supplying 61% of all arrivals in the June 2015 year.

Regarding those who have moved permanently to New Zealand, there was a seasonally adjusted net gain of 4,800 migrants in June 2015. "Net migration has been fluctuating around this level for 11 months," said population statistics manager Vina Cullum.

For the third month in a row, there was a seasonally adjusted net gain of 100 migrants from Australia. Before April 2015 there had not been a net gain in migrants from Australia in over 20 years.

Annual permanent and long term migration showed a record net gain of 58,300 migrants in the June 2015 year. This resulted from 115,700 migrant arrivals, and 57,400 migrant departures.

Of those arriving to work and live in the June 2015 year, some 64% were aged 15 to 34, 24,100 were from Australia, and 13,500 were from the United Kingdom, with most having work visas or New Zealand citizenship.

The data also shows that 13,300 were from India, with three quarters having student visas and 10,300 were from China, with about half having student visas.

Official data also shows that life expectancy in New Zealand has increased throughout the country, adding to its appeal to people from all over the world.

Hawke's Bay saw life expectancy increasing the most overall while for women it was highest in the Tasman region and for men highest in the Auckland region at 84.1 and 80.5 years respectively.