Growth - Australia

Migration Continues to Ramp-Up into New South Wales and Victoria

 www.first2move.com.au 

The latest demographic data release from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows a big jump in net overseas migration over the first quarter of 2017.  The 86,595 increase in net overseas migration throughout the March 2017 quarter was the largest quarterly increase since March 2009 (88,696).  The quarterly rate of net overseas migration was also 36% higher over the March 2017 quarter than the March 2016 quarter.

The latest demographic data shows that there were an estimated 24.512 million Australians at the end of March 2017.  Over the 12 months to March 2017, the national population increased by 1.6% and was rising at its fastest rate since the year to March 2014.  Across the states and territories, Victoria remained the fastest growing state by some distance (2.4%) followed by the Australian Capital Territory (1.8%) and New South Wales and Queensland (both 1.6%).  Elsewhere, the rate of population growth over the past year has been below 1%, recorded at: 0.6% in South Australia and Tasmania, 0.7% in Western Australia and 0.1% in Northern Territory.

In terms of the raw number increase in population growth, 70.1% of all population growth nationally occurred in New South Wales (123,296) and Victoria (149,374).  Elsewhere the population increase was also significant in Queensland (75,372) but much lower in Western Australia (18,398), South Australia (10,255), Australian Capital Territory (7,170), Tasmania (3,091) and Northern Territory (338).

Looking at the components of population growth, over the 12 months to March 2017 there was an additional 142,427 persons due to natural increase and 231,890 persons due to net overseas migration.  Over the year, the rate of natural increase fell by -5.8% while the rate of net overseas migration rose by 26.9%.  Net overseas migration accounted for 59.6% of total population growth over the past year which was its highest proportion of the increase since the 12 months to March 2010.

(Source: CoreLogic)