- Telephone
- Email
The ABS small area building approvals data for August landed on 7 October. On our Trend series, Cairns SA4 approvals ran at 111 dwellings in August, down 19.0% on a year earlier. Over the same period the Queensland Trend rose 18.2% and the national Trend rose 9.1%. Cairns is 17th …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 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
The IMF has taken 0.1 ppts off its 2026 global growth forecast, to 3.0%. That is the entire cost, measured at the global aggregate, of the biggest interruption to oil supply the market has seen. The July World Economic Outlook Update also lifted 2027 by 0.2 ppts to 3.4%, which …read more
The Conus Trend series for Cairns SA4 building approvals fell to 96 in May, down 21.6% year-on-year and the lowest monthly reading since November 2024. Last month’s April read has also been revised, down to 101 from the 104 first reported. As flagged previously, the series is still working through …read more
The latest ABS Monthly Household Spending Indicator (May 2026) confirms a milestone worth pausing on. Discretionary spending growth crossed above non-discretionary in March, the first time that has happened in this cost-of-living cycle, and the gap has widened in each month since. By May, Trend discretionary spending was up 5.2% …read more
Cairns Regional Council adopted its 2026/27 budget on 17 June, and for the median residential ratepayer the headline is a total bill increase of around 7.5%, or roughly $283 a year. General property rates themselves rise a more modest 3.95%; the gap between the two is water, waste, and the …read more
The raw figures for May looked soft. Total passenger movements through Cairns Airport came in at 376,582, down 2.8 per cent on May last year. But the headline does the underlying trend a disservice. Our seasonally adjusted and Trend work tells a more encouraging story: the Conus Trend for total …read more
In this blog we decompose population growth in the Cairns Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) into its three drivers (natural increase, net internal migration and net overseas migration) over the eight years to 2024-25. The aim is to establish how the region’s growth is actually generated, and how that composition …read more
The Crisafulli Government released the tender for the head contractor of the Cairns Hospital Expansion on 11 June, advancing a $1 billion-plus program expected to generate around 3,800 construction jobs for Cairns and Far North Queensland. Funded through the fully-funded Hospital Rescue Plan, the project is described by the government …read more
We are proud to have CBC Staff Selection as supporters of the Conus/CBC Staff Selection Trend Employment and Jobseeker data series