I’ve been living and working in New Zealand for over 9 months now and I have a work permit. While the process was somewhat straight forward and easy, it wasn’t completely clear to me how long it would take to get a work permit. I asked a lot people around and everyone had a different answer. After my experience I thought I would write this post to detail the whole process of getting a work permit in New Zealand and give you an estimate of how long it will take you.This article is all about how long does it take to get a work permit in New Zealand for residents of Australia. What is the processing time? Let’s find out together, in this article.
How Long Does It Take To Get A Work Permit In New Zealand
One of the most common questions I hear from my readers is: Are there any shortcut to getting a work permit in New Zealand? The fact is, you cannot always get a work permit the same time you apply for it since the application process can be a long and complicated one. To help you understand how long is it going to take before applying for a work permit in New Zealand, I will guide you through the application steps.
How long it takes to process a visa application
Average processing times for visitor, student, work and residence visas.
Check your status online
If you applied online, you can check the status of your application and find out if we need more information from you.
Checking your application status
Average processing times
Find out how many calendar days it has taken us to process applications for our most common visas in the 3 months to 1 June 2022. For applications that take more than 90 days we have rounded that number to the nearest month. For example, if applications take 110 days, we say it takes 4 months.
NOTE
Current visitor visa application processing times are based on onshore (people within New Zealand) visitor visa applications for further visas which are often complicated to assess. These issues can lengthen processing time.
Offshore applications for visitor visas open on 31 July 2022. Processing times for these applications are expected to be significantly shorter than current visitor visa processing times.
Visitor visa
| Visa | 50% of applications completed within: | 75% of applications completed within: | 90% of applications completed within: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visitor (holiday) | 5 days | 20 days | 71 days |
Find recent processing times for other types of visitor visa, for example business and group visitor visas.
Fees, decision times & where to apply
Student visas
| Visa | 50% of applications completed within: | 75% of applications completed within: | 90% of applications completed within: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee Paying Student | 27 days | 42 days | 63 days |
| Variation of conditions on a student visa | 17 days | 24 days | 37 days |
Find recent processing times for other student visas.
Fees, decision times & where to apply
You can also find out how long it takes to process visas for international students depending on the type of education provider they study with.
Visa processing times for international students
Work visas
| Visa | 50% of applications completed within: | 75% of applications completed within: | 90% of applications completed within: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials Skills | 0 days | 16 days | 52 days |
| Essential Skills – Lite | 49 days | 77 days | 3 months |
| Partner of a New Zealander | 0 days | 30.5 days | 85 days |
| Partner of student | 35 days | 52 days | 85 days |
| Partner of worker | 13 days | 50 days | 4 months |
| Post Study Work Visa | 0 days | 0 days | 15 days |
| Variation of conditions on a work visa | 20 days | 25 days | 32 days |
Find recent processing times for other work visas
Fees, decision times & where to apply
NOTE
Visa processing timeframes for Essential Skills, Partner of a New Zealander and Post Study Work Visa have been impacted by visas automatically granted as a result of the Special Direction on 6 May 2022.
| Visa | 50% of applications completed within: | 75% of applications completed within: | 90% of applications completed within: |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partner of a New Zealander | 6 months | 9 months | 13 months |
| Permanent Resident Visa | 82 days | 3 months | 5 months |
| Skilled Migrant | 34 months | 42 months | 47 months |
| Transfer of visa to new passport | 8 days | 11 days | 14 days |
| Variation of travel conditions on a resident visa | 13 days | 22 days | 31 days |
NOTE
Due to the impacts of COVID-19 we are experiencing delays in the processing of Permanent Resident Visas and Transfer of Visas to new passports. Transfer of Visas to new passports may take longer than indicated above. We apologise for any inconvenience and we are working hard to improve this.
Find recent processing times for other resident visas.