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International visitors spent $1.25bn in Tropical North Queensland in the year to June 2026, up 22.3%. That is well ahead of the national increase of 15.6% but behind Queensland’s 28.3%, so the region’s share of the State’s international spend slipped 0.8 ppts to 15.4%. Visitor numbers rose 11.7% to 634,400 …read more
Australian households are spending on wants again. In Trend terms, discretionary spending was up 7.0% over the year to August, against 5.2% for non-discretionary spending. Discretionary growth first moved ahead in March. Setting aside the lockdown and reopening swings of 2020 to 2023, that has not happened since 2018. Total …read more
Cairns Trend unemployment rose to 5.2% in August, the sixth consecutive monthly increase and its highest level since Oct 2021. It comes with a revision worth flagging: July’s figure, reported at 4.8% in our last update, has been revised up to 5.0% now that August’s data is in. The rate …read more
The 2026 Intergenerational Report has been read this week as a national story. From where we sit, the more important story is regional and we’ve written a Briefing Paper to explain why. Here is the number that stopped us. In Australia’s capital cities there are 4.34 working-age people for every …read more
The ABS published its June quarter tourism labour figures last Wednesday and the headline looked pretty unexciting. There were 726,300 tourism filled jobs, down 1,200 (0.2%) on the previous quarter. Over the year they are up 28,300, or 4.1%, ahead of the 2.6% the whole economy managed, and tourism now …read more
The ABS released its March quarter population figures this morning and the interstate migration numbers are the ones worth your time. Queensland’s net interstate migration was 14,718 in the year to March, down 39.5% on the 24,319 of a year earlier, and the lowest annual reading since the year to …read more
The ABS released its small area building approvals data on 8 September, which is the cut that carries a Cairns geography. On our Trend series, Cairns SA4 approvals ran at 108 dwellings in July, down 19.1% on a year earlier. The Queensland ABS Trend over the same period rose 20.0%, …read more
A month ago we argued that the fall in dwelling prices since March had rather less to do with the Budget’s negative gearing and CGT changes than the commentary suggested, and rather more to do with three interest rate rises (see here). The August PropTrack data (along with its revisions …read more
Australians cut their spending on overseas travel by 13.9% in the June quarter, a fall of $2,547 million, and the ABS notes that imports of travel services (Aussies travelling overseas) are now at their lowest level since the recovery from the COVID-19 border closures. This is not a price effect: …read more
Queensland household spending was 6.5% higher than a year earlier in July, against 6.2% for Australia, on the ABS Trend series. Queensland is ahead, but by 0.23 percentage points, which is a good deal less than the headline number suggests. Both figures are in current prices, so they mix up …read more
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series