About 200,000 have disappeared from State Government population projections for Queensland, signalling an end to the Covid population boom.
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The Budget documents have revealed that net overseas migration into Queensland has returned to pre-pandemic levels and this was where the population growth would come from over the next four years, not the Sydney and Melbourne escapees as was the case for the past few years.
That reflects a significant change in population dynamics. During the Covid era, 101,000 people shifted from the southern states to Queensland, but it has slowed considerably.
The Budget documents said that after a substantial upswing in the first three quarters of 2021-22 of 46,930 people, net interstate migration had continued to normalise in the following six months to 8200 people a quarter.
The Budget papers also point to a bit of a surge in births during Covid. The Queensland fertility rate had been in steady decline for a decade from 2.17 in 2009 to 1.65 in 2020. However, that jumped to 1.79 in 2021 when the lockdowns and travel restrictions were in place.
The Government believes that financial pressures impacting household incomes would mean the increase in births during Covid was likely to be temporary and fertility rates would drop back to normal levels.
The state’s population growth, which has been an important driver of the economy, is expected to ease through the 2023-24 year t0 1.75 per cent and the drop even further to 1.5 per cent for the next four years.
Previous forecasts had put the growth of the state’s population at 1.4 million by 2036 reaching 6.7 million.
However, this year’s update by Treasury now claims that increase would fall by 200,000 to 1.2 million.
“The almost 200,000 lower projected population in Queensland in the 2023 edition equates to a population approximately the size of the Cairns local government area,” the documents said.
The number of Queenslanders over the age of 65 would also continued to increase and reach 1.3 million by 2036 and blow out to 2.3 million by 2071.
The pandemic and subsequent population shift affected Queensland regions in different ways. Several local government areas saw a significant increase, including Fraser Coast, Livingstone, Gympie and the Whitsundays. Lower growth was also recorded in Budaberg, Gladstone, Cairns, Mackay and Townsville.
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