Australian population clock strikes 24.5 million

Population growth picks up

It was only in February last year that we saw the Australian resident population clock pass 24 million.

Today, the population clock quietly ticks past 24,500,000.

The population clock presently assumes an increase of one person every one minute and 22 seconds.

So what does this mean for Australia median house prices? – Here’s how the number currently stand: 

 

Acceleration

The quarterly rate of population growth in Australia has picked up strongly again since bottoming out in early 2015.

In fact absolute population growth has been very strong since the mining boom, and has comfortably exceeded expectations before the Sydney Olympics.

Versus the 1999 ABS forecasts the population today is 2.95 million higher than was projected at that time.

That’s not to decry the forecasts, which must be always be wrong to some extent.

Rather this is to show the potential scale of the impact from the mining boom on the creaking infrastructure deficit.

In particular the growth in population of the capital cities has far outstripped anything that could have been expected two decades ago, and projections expect this trend towards urban densification to intensify.