Do your industries mainly export or sell to locals?

All areas need some capacity for industry to grow and change, but the focus of areas can be quite different. Many places have a particular industry that they are known for, or specialise in, and which may be their main export, while they may also have a range of industries which mainly support the local population. An area which is predominantly a dormitory suburb may only have those locally focused service industries. economy.id can help you understand which of your industries provide the vital export dollars for your economy, and which ones to try to develop in the future.

For instance, have a look at this chart for Tweed Shire in far northern NSW.

The place has a total value add of about $2.2b and gross economic output of $4.5b. The chart shows where this economic output goes, compared to the average of all LGAs in the state of NSW.

As you can see, despite being something of a tourist place, the vast majority of Tweed’s economic output goes in local sales – that is, sales to residents and businesses in the area. This is the case across NSW – where about 60% of economic output is consumed locally. However in Tweed that goes up to 83%.

Why would that be? Well it’s worth looking at what the main industries are in Tweed.

It shows that by far the two biggest industries are health care and construction (mainly housing). Health care is always large in an area like this with an elderly population, and always serves the local population predominantly. But particularly in places where the predominant industry within Health Care is Residential and Aged Care services.

Also for construction (chart not shown), all output is defined as being local sales in the NIEIR model. This makes sense – if you are building something by definition it exists where it is put, which is the local area. So if you have an area with a lot of construction employment, there will be a high local sales component to your economic output.

But Tweed is also a tourism area, and have a look at the same chart for Accommodation and Food Services. Here you can see that in Tweed, the industry has a larger focus on domestic tourism than the NSW average.

So each area is different, with a combination of locally focused and export focused industries making up the economic community in your place.

For more economic information about Australia, visit our demographic resource centre. If you would like to learn more about how you can use economic data to benefit your community, visit our website or contact us at info@id.com.au.  You may also wish to sign up to our newsletter to receive the latest economic and demographic insights of Australia.