Migration between capital cities and regional Australia
The ABS has a new dataset which is great for analyzing where people are moving across Australia. It’s called “RIME”, or the Regional Internal Migration Estimates. This is still experimental, but it’s being produced every year. We currently have data from 2006-7 to 2013-14.
I recently presented at the Australian Regional Development Conference. Whenever I present in Regional Australia, one question recurs quite alot – “How can we increase our population?”. While many metropolitan areas are worried about providing services to ever growing populations, many regional areas would welcome more people. This is one of the reasons I think regional areas need to do more to attract migrants, including taking a large share of refugee communities.
But a lot of discussion at the conference was about how regional areas can attract population from capital cities. Let’s see what RIME says.
This chart shows the relative split of population by state and territory. The orange bars are the regional (ex-metropolitan) part of state. See how NSW and Queensland make up the majority of Australia’s population living outside a capital city? They are relatively more dispersed than other states. Actually Tasmania is the most dispersed but its population is very small.
This table shows the mismatch between the amount of population growth going to regional areas, compared to the amount of population living in them. So for instance in NSW, 36.7% of population lives outside Sydney, but only 25.1% of growth occurred there in the 2009-2014 period, a mismatch of 10.6%. Victoria is particularly interesting, with 87% of all the state’s growth being in the Greater Melbourne region.
State | Regional part of state share of growth | Mismatch to share of population |
NSW | 25.1% | -10.6% |
Vic | 13.0% | -11.0% |
Qld | 47.7% | -4.2% |
SA | 12.4% | -10.2% |
WA | 15.4% | -6.1% |
Tas | 31.2% | -26.2% |
NT | 31.2% | -11.5% |
ACT | 0.0% | 0.0% |
Australia | 24.2% | -9.3% |
But this is beginning to change. What the regional migration estimates show for 2013/14 is that there is a significant shift, but it’s only affecting one metropolitan area – Sydney. Is it congestion, extremely high housing prices, or just the presence of larger regional centres with strong economies? But people are leaving Sydney in significant numbers, and moving to regional NSW, Melbourne and Regional Victoria.
In just one year, Greater Sydney had a net migration loss of nearly 15,000 people. This is more than offset by the large amount of overseas migration the city receives, but it was by far the largest loss to internal migration, and you can see a lot of it is into regional NSW. In contrast, Melbourne is growing but Regional Victoria added more people through internal migration. Again, Melbourne gains a lot of overseas migrants to make up for it. Elsewhere in the country, Adelaide also lost people, as did Tasmania outside Hobart, while both Darwin and the rest of NT lose people interstate. Both Brisbane and the rest of Queensland had gains.
This is what the picture looks like when you add in the other components of population change, natural increase and overseas migration.
You can see that though regional growth is much smaller, both Regional NSW and Regional Victoria rely in migration from within Australia for a lot of their population growth, while Melbourne, Sydney and to a lesser extent Perth rely on overseas migration.
This is an interesting trend, and it pre-dates the most recent very large increases in housing prices. We’ll be monitoring this closely, to see if there are more people fleeing Sydney in coming years due to housing prices, and whether this spreads to other capital cities as well.
Hi Glen,
I would be very greatful if you could unpack the Tasmanian data a little more and provide some insight as to what is happening in Launceston City and the north of the state.
My sense is net population growth in Launceston is either negative or completely flat. It would be interesting to understand if people are moving to Launceston City from OS, interstate or within the state and where people are moving to?
I think Launceston is behaving very differently to Hobart?
Is it possible for your to shed some light on this?
Thanks Bruce.
Hi Bruce,
We don’t actually have the individual LGA level data from RIME for 2013-14 for the moment. But according to the latest ABS Estimated Resident Population, the City of Launceston’s population has indeed been flat since 2011. In fact it shows a loss of 40 people in 3 years (which is negligible and the ERP is not accurate enough to say conclusively there has been a loss, it’s subject to review after the next Census). The interesting thing about Launceston though is that the growth areas actually fall into neighbouring councils, West Tamar and Northern Midlands. These areas have added about 400 people over the same time period, so as a greater city area, Launceston is still growing.
Launceston is a great example of a community which is compensating for loss of population via internal migration, and ageing, by taking in refugee communities. In the last 3 years it has added over 1,300 migrants from overseas, including a significant Bhutanese community, as well as neighbouring Nepal, Iran and Afghanistan.
Glenn
Glenn,
Does the data show any trends in the age groups of the people moving to rural/regional areas? I have seen articles that find it is mostly your older people around retirement. Younger people seem to be the ones moving to urban areas.