Mixed signals on Australia’s population growth

Advertisement

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) population data has become a lottery.

The population estimates in the Q3 2024 and Q4 2024 national accounts releases (here and here) differed wildly from the official quarterly population statistics released a few weeks later.

The Q1 2025 national accounts, released on Wednesday, implied that Australia’s population growth accelerated to 121,200 in Q1:

Population implied by national accounts
Advertisement

However, the national accounts suggest that Australia’s annual population increase slowed from 484,000 in Q3 2024 (the latest official figure) to 459,300 in Q1 2025:

Population national accounts

As a result, the rate of population growth rate is implied to have fallen from 1.8% in Q3 2024 to 1.7% in Q1 2025:

Advertisement
Population growth rate

Based on past experience, this data should be viewed with caution and could easily get revised upwards when the official Q4 data is released later this month.

Indeed, the latest labour force release suggests that Australia’s population grew by 0.65% in the three months to April, equating to a population increase of 147,000 people (or an annualised rate of ~588,000):

Advertisement

The annual rate of growth in the 15-plus population also ticked up to 2.1% (471,000) in April, according to the labour force survey:

Annual population increase
Advertisement

The following chart from CBA shows the divergence in the two series:

Population growth

Alex Joiner from IFM Investors showed that both net permanent and long-term arrivals and the civilian population have ticked higher in 2025:

Advertisement
Net arrivals

This, in turn, casts doubt on the federal budget’s forecasts for net overseas migration.

NOM versus population growth
Advertisement

Finally, the following table shows that net permanent and long-term arrivals totaled 188,000 in the first quarter of 2025. This was only slightly below last year’s figure of 195,040 and well above 2023’s figure of 154,890:

Net permanent arrivals

So, is Australia’s population growth now rising or falling? The various indicators are contradictory.

Advertisement

The official Q4 data, scheduled for release later this month, should be interesting.

About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.