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Jobs up, wealth down as southerners continue to head for the sun belt

The Australian jobs market continues to boom but the wealth of Australians took a $770 billion hit in the past six months, almost all of it related to the fall in real estate values.

Dec 15, 2022, updated Dec 15, 2022

Queensland’s unemployment was unchanged last month at 3.3 per cent, one of the better performers nationally. Overall, Australia’s unemployment was 3.4 per cent.

The state’s jobs performance is made more significant by the huge inflow of people into the state in the year to June.

According to the ABS, the Queensland population continued to grow in the 12 months with the population hitting 5.3 million, an increase of 104,000. The biggest component of the increase was the continued shift of population from NSW and Victoria.

Australia’s population also increased in the year after falling during the Covid restrictions which prevented immigration.

There were 395,000 overseas migration arrivals and 224,100 departures during the year with a net benefit of 170,900 people.

Australia’s household wealth fell for the second consecutive quarter, decreasing by 1.9 per cent, or $276 billion, in the September quarter 2022, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Total household wealth was now $14.2 trillion, after the previous fall of 3.3 per cent ($494 billion) in the June quarter this year. However, household wealth grew by 0.7 per cent through the year despite these two consecutive quarterly falls.

Katherine Keenan, ABS head of finance and wealth statistics, said: “This fall in household wealth was almost entirely driven by the decrease in the value of residential land and dwellings, which recorded its largest decline since December 2008.”

The softer fall in household wealth in the September quarter was due in part to an increase in household deposits (up 3.5 per cent to $50.8 billion), driven by a rise in term deposits.

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“The record increase in household take up of term deposits coincided with increasing interest rates, and income tax returns,” Keenan said.

 

 

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