We are back with more data. Today we look at population changes across the regions in the 2021–22 financial year. The 2021–22 financial year ran from 1 July 2021 to 30 June 2022 — by then Australia had fully entered the post-pandemic phase and people could move about freely domestically, while overseas arrivals were in the early stages of a slow recovery.

Australia’s

capital cities

– After the population decline of the pandemic period, the capital cities added 205,400 people in 2021–22, a growth rate of 1.2%

– That growth owes a great deal to the large inflow of overseas migrants, plus strong natural increase, but net internal migration was negative (with Sydney and Melbourne the main drag) — in other words, more people who used to live in the capital cities moved out to non-capital areas (the more outer regions; note this is different from “regional areas” as defined for migration purposes)

Capital cities

vary widely

Just how much? Let’s put up a chart so you can see it at a glance…

– After all the additions and subtractions, Brisbane led the whole of Australia on both the size and the rate of population growth, adding 59,200 people at a growth rate of 2.3%

–Sydney of course attracted the most overseas arrivals (up 54,886 people), but it was also the city existing residents were keenest to leave — it lost 51,738 people, so even with natural increase its net growth was just 37,325 people, a growth rate of only 0.7%

–Melbourne’s make-up is similar to Sydney’s, but Melbourne is clearly “more affordable to live in” — it lost 26,000 people but gained 54,000 from overseas, for an actual increase of 55,038 people, a growth rate of 1.1%

–Perth and Adelaide are similar too, though Perth draws more people from within Australia, and its overseas inflow is solid as well, so its figures look better

– The remaining Canberra, Hobart and Darwin, for various reasons including their living environment, see only “modest” movements in overseas and internal migration and natural increase — a whole financial year nets just a few thousand more people

The outskirts of the two big cities

are growing fast

Below are the areas with the population growthlargest

Below are the areas with the population growthfastest

Most of them are areas on the fringes of Sydney and Melbourne，. Take Sydney’s Box Hill – Nelson area (not Melbourne’s Box Hill), which is a one-hour drive from the city centre. It can’t be helped — with house prices rising ever higher, the only way to live somewhere less crowded is to live further out.Naturally, that also makes these areas places with strong growth potential.

Non-

capital regions

The population growth rate is also 1.2%，but in absolute numbers it is only half that of the capital cities。

Among the non-capital regions, the Sunshine Coast’s Caloundra West – Baringa had the largest population increase, while Victoria’s Geelong area, Charlemont, had the fastest growth rate。

Summary

So broadly, this is the trend right now

–More and more Australians are moving away from Sydney and Melbourne, with Brisbane the top destination and Perth roughly second.Queensland, where Brisbane sits, also attracts plenty of overseas migrants, so on net population inflow Queensland is ahead of New South Wales and Victoria, and this is likely to remain the overall trend for some time to come.

–The first stop for overseas arrivals is still the two big cities, and in absolute terms they more than make up for the local residents who leave — enough to keep Sydney and Melbourne thriving

–The gaps between the capital cities are huge, let alone between a capital and the rest of its state.So it makes good sense that, under the migration definition, everywhere apart from Sydney, Melbourne and inner-city Brisbane counts as a regional area.

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