Income growth at the regional level in Queensland

Posted on January 15, 2019 by Pete Faulkner - Cairns, Jobs, QLD, Townsville, Uncategorized

Last month saw the release of the Labour Account series which provided details of income growth rates for various industry sectors (see here for our post at the time). Given the various income growth rates across industry sectors and combining this with the industry employment breakdown at the regional level (from our own Conus Industry Employment Trend data; see here for details) we can estimate income growth rates across the various SA4 regions in Queensland*. Doing so provides us with some interesting insights.

While average income growth across the nation (weighted by industry sector employment) was 2.15%, Queensland saw an increase of just 1.93%. Digging deeper into the state data we see that Greater Brisbane achieved income growth of just 1.77% while the Rest of Queensland manged a more impressive 2.08%. The main reasons for the differences can be summarised as;

• Agriculture saw solid average income growth (+6.17%) which obviously favoured regional areas above the capital. Regional areas with significant agricultural sectors did particularly well (e.g. Darling Downs, Outback, Toowoomba, Wide Bay).
• Financial Services employment is focused on Greater Brisbane and its relatively solid performance (+3.43%) therefore favoured the capital.
• Although Other Services growth was extremely high (+14.26%) its impact was uniform across most regions.
• Professional Services saw a reduction in average incomes (-4.76%) which was more keenly felt in the capital and accounted for about half of the difference between Greater Brisbane and the Rest of Queensland. (Agriculture was most of the other half).
• Retail Trade saw average incomes rise (awards and penalty rate changes) and this favoured the regions over the capital where the percentage of the workforce employed in this sector is higher.

Within a few specific regions we saw (data for additional regions is available…please contact us for details);

• Cairns average income increased at a healthy 2.45% due to over-representation in sectors that did well across the nation (i.e. Admin Services, Agriculture and Retail Trade) and under-representation in some of the weaker sectors (i.e. Construction and Professional Services)
• Fitzroy enjoyed the highest average income growth in the Queensland (+2.67%) on the back of over-representation in Other Services (which saw a very strong rise of 14.26% nationally) which may well be due to mining related service sectors (?) and Agriculture. Mining itself, while important for the region, saw average incomes actually fall slightly so the overall impact for the region was minimal, although negative. Professional Services (where incomes fell nationally) is under-represented which provided a relative positive for the region.
• Brisbane-Inner City recorded the lowest average income growth in Queensland (+1.20%). This was significantly lower than the Greater Brisbane average due to a heavy over-representation in the Professional Services sector (where average incomes fell sharply) and under-representation in Retail Trade (where incomes rose). Construction, which was a negative across the State, had less of a detrimental impact in the Inner City than elsewhere in Greater Brisbane.

	Average Income y/y Sept 2018
Australia	2.15
Queensland	1.93
Greater Brisbane	1.77
Brisbane – East	1.73
Brisbane – North	1.50
Brisbane – South	1.67
Brisbane – West	1.48
Brisbane Inner City	1.20
Ipswich	2.22
Logan – Beaudesert	2.37
Moreton Bay – North	1.99
Moreton Bay – South	1.64
Rest of Qld	2.08
Cairns	2.45
Darling Downs – Maranoa	2.39
Fitzroy	2.67
Gold Coast	1.92
Mackay	2.01
Qld – Outback	1.67
Sunshine Coast	1.52
Toowoomba	1.80
Townsville	2.26
Wide Bay	2.49

*Notes on the data

The data set is derived using the quarterly average income per employed person data from the ABS Labour Account (6150.0.55.003).
At the industry level the yearly average income changes are then weighted by the percentage of total employment in each industry sector as calculated from the Conus Industry Jobs Trend series (which is in turn derived from the original ABS Labour Force Detailed Quarterly data set; 6291.0.55.003) for State and Region, and from the ABS Trend Persons Employed data in the Labour Account for Australia.
The resulting data therefore gives an indication, at the regional level, of the average income change.
The Labour Account average income data is for quarters ending in March, June, Sept and Dec whereas the Labour Force Detailed Quarterly is for quarters ending in Feb, May, Aug and Nov. Nevertheless, the difference (particularly when seen on a Trend basis) of this timing issue is likely to be minimal.
Actual income data at the regional level is not available. Therefore, the derived changes assume that income changes across industry sectors are common across regions. Differences across regions in average incomes are due to variations in the industry make-up of the employment in those regions.

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