Regional Population; Cairns growing at more than twice the pace of Townsville

Today saw the ABS release their regional population estimates for June 2017. When we consider the data at the SA4 level we see that Cairns grew by almost 3,000 people to just above 250,000 in the year from June 2016; that’s a 1.2% increase. Despite the fact that this is …read more

Where have QLD’s new Public Sectors jobs been seen?

The release of the Public Sector employment data for the Dec 2017 quarter allows us to take a look at which regions have seen the greatest increases this year, and since the ALP came to power in 2015. What we see, when considering Full-time equivalents (FTE), is an increase of …read more

Regional Building Approvals data shows Trend improving in the Far North

Last week we saw the ABS release of building approvals data for February demonstrate that (on a Trend basis) Queensland was still doing somewhat better than the nation with approvals growth of 6.9% y/y versus 5.5% for Australia as a whole. This week the regional data shows us that the Far …read more

Regional employment data shows Cairns and Townsville almost static; Healthcare is the big growth industry

Today saw the release of the Feb monthly Regional Labour Force and the quarterly regional Industry employment data. Both data-sets are best seen through the lens of the Conus Trend series, so we shall start with the monthly data. Employment growth across QLD remains strong at 4.7% y/y (see here …read more

SEIFA tells an interesting story of the North; Townsville Cairns gap closes

Today saw the release of the 2016 Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), last seen in 2011. There are a number of indexes included in the release which tell us about relative socio-economic advantage and/or disadvantage of local areas down to the SA1 area, which are based on the 2016 Census data. …read more

SALM shows Mareeba Shire as the best performer in FNQ

The Dept of Employment recently released the latest Small Area Labour Market (SALM) data at the Local Government Area level for the quarter to December. Using the unsmoothed (original) SALM data, which is tucked away in the explanatory notes section, we have created a Conus SALM Trend series of unemployment …read more

Regional Trend jobs data shows Cairns participation increase holding up unemployment rate

Today’s release by the ABS of regional jobs data is best seen through the lens of the Conus Trend series. What this shows us is Trend unemployment in Greater Brisbane at 5.8% while the Rest of Queensland sits at 6.1%, However, over the past year Greater Brisbane (with employment growth …read more

Regional Building Approvals shows QLD’s lack-lustre performance is due to the regions

Today’s release of regional building approvals data shows that the poor performance being seen in QLD (see here) is due to declines in the regions. Trend approvals across the state were up just 4.4% y/y in December but when we look at the regional breakdown (by way of the Conus …read more

Regional Jobs data across QLD for 2017

As usual, we create the Conus Trend regional jobs data from the original ABS monthly data for Dec before making any real analysis. The results for the year to Dec 2017 across the state are detailed below. We see that Trend employment growth in QLD beat the nation by a …read more

Regional Labour Force and Industry Jobs data

Our catch-up of regional data continues with the November regional labour force numbers and the quarterly industry jobs numbers. Both of these data sets we prefer to analyse through the lens of the respective Conus Trend series. For the regional monthly jobs data we prepare the Conus Trend using the …read more

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