The Australian Binches of Statistics (ABS) has released its population data for 2022 and it turns out people are absolutely hightailing it out of one state in particular. Is anyone shocked to learn it’s New South Wales? No, me neither. But apparently people do love moving to Queensland.
According to the ABS, Australia’s population was 25,978,935 people at June 30, 2022. So not counting all the Cancers, Leos, Libras, Virgos, Scorpios and Sagittariuses born since then.
Annually, the country’s population grew by 1.1 per cent. Woo hoo!
The states and territories all successfully grew their populations as well, though Queensland was the winner with a growth rate of 2.0 per cent. This once again confirms my theory that all elements of my life would be vastly improved if I lived in a Queenslander-style house.
But looking at the net interstate migration tells a slightly different story. As it turns out, people simply love leaving NSW.
To go a little bit HSC maths on you: net interstate migration is worked out by subtracting interstate departures from interstate arrivals.
NSW recorded 98,428 interstate arrivals and 141,879 departures. This means the state’s net interstate migration was -43,451. Bye babes!
According to Planning NSW, we’re a “donor state”. In essence, it’s pretty standard that more people leave NSW than move to NSW. We are truly never beating the “Melbourne is better than Sydney” allegations.
But speaking of the ‘ol southern neighbours, it wasn’t just NSW which recorded negative net interstate migration.
Victoria, Tassie, Northern Territory and the ACT also recorded net migration in the negativos, though none as much as NSW. I mean, this also makes sense ‘cos NSW has the biggest population too.
Vic had a net interstate migration of -17,233, ACT had -3,318, NT had -3,016 and Tassie had -216. Aw, Tasmania.
But Queensland was once again slaying the population game. The state recorded a whopping 142,389 interstate arrivals and 86,971 departures so its net migration was 55,418.
Western Australia had a net interstate migration of 10,791 and SA squeezed in there with 1,025.
On the whole, Australia saw increases in our net overseas migration too.
“Net overseas migration increased by 255,800 persons compared to the previous year,” the ABS said in a media release.
“This was driven by an increase in overseas migration arrivals (170.5 per cent) with departures decreasing slightly (-3.0 per cent).”
The Binches of Statistics pointed out that all of these population stats were impacted by the pandemic and closure of international borders.
At the end of the day data only tells part of the story. But I think if there’s one thing we can takeaway it’s that Queensland is clearly the place to be.
