Acceleration
The 2016 Census is released today, and it will show that the Australian population is markedly higher than was previously estimated, and furthermore it is growing faster than previously thought.
The increase has not been due to natural population increase, with the mini-boom in births actually slackening off a little lately.
Instead the main driver has been annual net overseas migration which picked up to nearly +209,000 in 2016, from +179,000 in 2015.
Totting it up this means that population growth accelerated to +1.6 per cent or +372,800 in 2016, which is a sharp increase from +340,000 in 2015.
Thus the population clock today sits considerably higher than previously expected at 24,570,000. Only last week we thought the population was just passing 24.5 million.
This has a number of ramifications, not least for calculations of apartment oversupply.
On Census night there were also more than 1 million dwellings vacant or 11.2 per cent of the total dwelling stock, up from 10.7 per cent in 2011.
The wrap
The 2016 Census detail will reveal a range of fascinating information, which will be the subject of future blog posts.
Australia has now become much more Asian, with more of us born overseas, but fewer Aussies are identifying themselves as religious types
Meanwhile the typical mortgage repayment actually fell between Census periods with mortgage rates having dropped sharply since 2011.
Somewhat surprisingly, only 7.2 per cent of households were paying 30 per cent of their income towards a mortgage, representing a sharp decline since the last Census, with the rise of interest-only loans a likely factor here.
As we will see in the next post, Sydney and particularly Melbourne are expanding their respective populations at a furious pace.
