The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently revealed that Australia’s yearly population growth rate slowed for the fourth consecutive quarter, and the Housing Industry Association (HIA) argued that this could result in slower growth in retail and residential building.
Overseas migration has fallen by 9% since the changes to visa requirements were implemented in April 2017, reducing the population growth rate to 1.6%.
“Changes to visas for skilled workers have delivered an immediate hit to Australia’s population growth,” said Geordan Murray, HIA Principal Economist.
“The current phase of Australia’s 28 years of continuous economic growth is built upon the arrival of skilled migrants. Skilled migration is necessary to offset the impact of our aging population,” he added.
Early last year, Australia introduced a range of visa changes, which have decreased the number of skilled migrants arriving in the country – in fact, South Wales and Victoria, which have benefitted the most from overseas migration over recent years, are currently seeing population growth rates declining.
HIA noted that population growth is still high for a developed economy, but the organisation warned that the slowing rate may contribute to slower growth of household consumption.
“This means slower growth in sectors such as retail and residential building. Given that these two sectors are amongst the nation’s largest employers the risks presented a decline in population growth should not be underestimated,” explained Murray.
Over the year through March 2018, Victoria saw the strongest growth in population, up by 2.2%. Coming in the second spot was the Australian Capital Territory (+2.1%) and was followed by Queensland (+1.7%). New South Wales was the fourth fastest, increasing by 1.6 %. Tasmania was fifth (+1.0 %), Western Australia sixth (+0.8 %) and South Australia seventh (+0.7%). Meanwhile, the population of the Northern Territory dropped over the last two quarters and the annual rate of growth has slowed to 0.1%.
