AUSTRALIAN IMMIGRATION NEWS

Australian Immigration Key Contributor to Population Growth

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

According to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on September 29, 2011, immigration is still the key factor in population growth despite a general decline in net migration.

The ABS revealed in a statement on the same day that Australian's population "reached 22,546,300 people at the end of March 2011, growing by 312,400 people over the year."

"This is down from the previous year where the population grew by 374,600 people, and is the lowest growth since the year ending March 2006 when an increase of 299,269 people was recorded," quoted from the statement.

The statistics showed changes to Australia's population from the past 12 months to March 2011. With 167,000 people immigrating to Australia during the period, immigration accounts for 54 percent of the increase in Australian population growth.

The figures indicate that immigration is still a key factor in population growth despite the fact that overall population growth rate has slowed to 1.4 percent.

Although the current growth rate is slower than in the last two years, it is equal to the average population growth for the last thirty years.

KPMG demographer Bernard Salt projected that Australian immigration numbers would stabilise over the coming year at a slightly higher level than the current growth rate.

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