Australia’s population has surged 15 per cent during the past decade despite Covid border closure

Australia’s population has surged during the past 10 years – with the upward trajectory only temporarily pausing as Covid saw the international border closed.

By the end of 2021, Australia was home to 25.738 million – a massive 15.2 increase since 2011, when the population was 22.34million.

Australia surpassed the 25million milestone in 2018 – 24 years earlier than forecast by Treasury’s inaugural Intergenerational Report in 2002.

This surge coincided with net annual immigration climbing above the 100,000 mark in 2002 and the 200,000 level just 11 years later. 

Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Tuesday also showed Australia becoming a lot more racially diverse, with migrants making up almost one-third of the population.

Of Australia’s top ten nations for country of birth, six of them are in Asia.

Those born in India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka make up 8.6 per cent of Australia’s total population, and 29.4 per cent of the population born overseas by the end of 2021.

A decade earlier, people from those six nations made up 6.1 per cent of the Australian population and 22.6 per cent of the migrant population.

Almost a third or 29.1 per cent of Australia’s resident population was born overseas, with 7.5million migrants on our shores.

A year earlier in late 2020, 29.8 per cent of people were born overseas, with 7.7million born overseas.

The decrease last year marked the first annual decline since 2000.

Australia’s population increased by 45,000 from June 2020 to June 2021.

But Jenny Dobak, the ABS’s head of migration statistics, said the overseas-born population fell.

‘The decrease reflected reduced overseas migration in and out of Australia, given the Covid-19 travel restrictions,’ she said.

‘The travel and migration intentions of many people changed due to the pandemic, including those migrating to work or study.

‘In the first year of the pandemic there were fewer people born overseas migrating to Australia, as well as fewer people born in Australia departing to live overseas.’

New Australian Bureau of Statistics data, released on Tuesday, also showed Australia becoming a lot more racially diverse with migrants making up 29.1 per cent of the population (pictured is a woman at Cabramatta in Sydney’s south-west)

Between June and September 2020, Australia’s population fell by 4,200 people or 0.02 per cent, as more people left than arrived and births failed to make up the shortfall.

The closure of Australia’s border to foreigners in March 2020 saw the population shrink for the first time since 1916, during World War I.

International students and skilled migrants were allowed into Australia again in December.

The past 40 years have seen Australia’s population grow at an average, annual pace of 1.4 per cent.

Before the pandemic in 2019, Australia’s population growth pace stood at 1.5 per cent – a level almost double the rich-world OCED average.

Turbo-charged immigration was also well above the global average of 1.064 per cent as calculated by the World Bank.

Now the era of high immigration is back, with Treasury forecasting a net intake of 235,000 by 2024.

Those born in India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka make up 8.6 per cent of Australia’s total population, and 29.4 per cent of the population born overseas by the end of 2021 (pictured is Cabramatta in Sydney’s south-west)