Saturday, September 27, 2008

Australia's astonishing migration statistics

I had not intended to post again today, but I really wanted to note for later reference the recent and quite astonishing Australian migration statistics.

The newspapers generally picked up the headline number, the 199,100 persons added to the permanent resident population in the year ended 30 March 2008, the highest on record. Less attention was paid to the underlying numbers.

In the year ended 30 March, 230,300 permanent residents left the country on a long term basis. This marks a continuing acceleration in the number of departures. On this basis, over the next ten years we will add roughly 2.2 million to the number of Australians living outside the country.

To gain 199,100 people while losing 230,300, we added no less than 429,300 new residents. This is an astonishing number for a country with an estimated population of 21,283,000, just over 2 per cent of the current population, equivalent to 4.3 million people over a ten year period.

I have not checked on the composition of who went, who came, but we seem to be in the middle of another social revolution.

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