Workers ditch the cities and head north

New data has shown that in 2021, more than fifty-four-thousand seven-hundred residents left New South Wales and Victoria as the COVID exodus to the regions continued.

In the final quarter of 2021 however, the number of overseas arrivals more than offset this loss of inter-state migration.

Housing Industry Association chief executive Tim Reardon said that a slow return of overseas migration is easing the adverse impact of a loss of workers from Australia’s two largest states.

“The loss of resident population in NSW and Victoria in the final quarter of 2021, has seen a growth of population in all other states and territories, except for the Northern Territory,” Mr Reardon noted.

“Most notable, more than 50,000 new residents moved to Queensland in 2021.

“This remarkable ongoing shift in the location of the resident population has been a significant driver of the acute shortage of rental accommodation in Australia.”

With the return of overseas migration, Australia’s annual population growth has started to recover from the COVID shock with the resident population increasing by 0.50 per cent in 2021.

This is compared to an average growth in the decade prior to COVID of 1.54 per cent.

Mr Reardon said that a stable and reliable migration pathway for skilled workers is central to a strong, and growing, national economy.

“The release of the initial 2021 Census data today also includes the number of unoccupied homes in Australia,” he said.

“Unoccupied dwellings have consistently made up around 10 per cent of dwellings in Australia in the past 35 years.

“The 2021 Census shows that 10.1 per cent of dwellings were unoccupied on census night in 2021.”

The two main reasons for a dwelling being unoccupied were that it was a holiday home, or the residents were absent on Census night.

“This is not evidence of an under-utilisation of housing stock, but an indication that on any given night of the week, some households are on holiday,” Mr Reardon said.