We construct a long time series of permanent and long-term arrivals and departures of construction workers to and from New Zealand between 1962 and 2018. After briefly describing the data and the sources, we discuss some key observations in the data. We observe that the large outflow of construction workers following the collapse of construction sector activity in the mid-1970s, combined with changes to migration rules in the early 1990s, led to a significant, persistent reduction in the net migration of construction workers. That reduction was probably partly responsible for the capacity constraints we currently observe in the construction sector.