After 17 years of extreme immigration-driven population growth:
Australia’s population growth is expected to ‘collapse’ due to the coronavirus travel bans:
As the COVID-19 pandemic sees our borders close to both overseas and interstate migrants, Australia’s net population increase will slow – particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, demographer Mark McCrindle says.
“The net gain that we have been seeing is going to be halted for this quarter and maybe the next six months,” Mr McCrindle says. “We’re looking at around 80,000 people per quarter across the nation.”
Melbourne saw the highest increase overall, with a net population increase of 113,480 – most from international migration (77,369), then due to natural increase (births minus deaths – 33,859) and a small proportion was interstate migration (2252).
Sydney was the capital with the second-highest population growth – a total increase of 87,065 was again mostly due to net international migration (73,919)…
“Overseas migration could be affected well into next year and maybe for a couple of years,” he says. “We could see tighter controls around the countries people are coming from, [and] maybe around the reasons they’re coming here. Also with high unemployment, we may well see a pull-back in what was the skilled visa – the 457 visa.”
He says people may also not be as attracted to moving to Australia as before, with students and long-term holiday-makers on working visas potentially re-thinking relocation.
“We’ve been one of the fastest growing nations in the developed world, and that growth did help us through the global financial crisis. Where other countries slipped into recession, we were assisted with our population growth,” he says.
As MB has argued over many years, Australia’s manic population growth only helped it avoid a technical recession during the GFC, not a per capita recession:
In fact, per capita GDP growth has worsened on the back of turbo-charged immigration as Australia’s economic pie has been shared amongst more people, resulting in a smaller individual slice.
Lower, more sustainable, levels of immigration will obviously also help to raise living standards by easing strains on infrastructure, housing and the environment.
Lower immigration is one of the few ‘silver linings’ from the coronavirus pandemic.
