During 2020, immigration basically stopped but those people still wanted to come here. So after the borders opened again, there was a rush on visas. I'm not that surprised about the jump.

What I am surprised about is the natural increase being under 20,000. I would have expected closer to 30,000. I don't exactly keep a close eye on these things though.

The births are lower than I expected, by a couple of thousand, but I think I just haven't looked at it for a while. They used to hover just over 60,000. But 38,574 deaths in 2022 is massive. I didn't realise what an impact COVID had! 2019 had about 34,000 deaths (and 2020 about 32,000 deaths, because everyone stayed home).

[–] liv 3 points 1 year ago

Wow, you're not kidding.

there were 228 more births, and 3,642 more deaths compared with the year ended December 2021.

Covid did kill someone close to me though, so I did know it was doing that.