Data commentary today is all over the latest ABS Labour Force employment numbers. So let’s instead have a quick browse of the latest ABS quarterly population also released.

The media release here was that Australian population recorded a 1.27% increase in the year to June 2020. Down from 1.53% in the year to June 2019. Which looks almost benign but hides very strong net overseas immigration in the initial months followed by a collapse in the final quarter.

Net overseas migration turned negative in the June quarter for the first time in this series since 1981. Annualised total population growth in the final June quarter was down below 0.5%.

Interstate migration though is important for Queensland:

Nostalgia though takes me back the the days of the recession we maybe had to have when it was refugees from a devastated Victorian dystopia who overloaded their caravans with what was left of their meagre belongings and headed north clogging the utopian highways of Queensland.

The Victorian phenomenon had been fading on interstate migration but it is interesting that this had significantly collapsed in the March quarter before Covid-19 really got going?

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