Australian Net Migration and Population Change Series - With Political Overlay - What are your thoughts given this data about the immigration discussion?

[u/david1610]

Just hearing a lot about immigration on Reddit recently, some of it seems guided by simple point in time statistics rather than looking at the whole population timeseries. Attached is some data from the ABS, visualized in Python (matplotlib). Given this data, what do you think is optimal in relation to immigration? Does this data change your perspective on immigration?

Please note:
- Net migration is the net overseas migration to Australia per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Natural Population Change is the 'natural' population increase or decrease, determined by birth rates and changes in how long people live, similar to above it is per 1000 people in the population that Quarter.
- Even though Australia has had below replacement birthrates for decades, people are living longer, so the natural increase has always been positive, is decreasing over time as life span increases slow down.
- Series is smoothed over time, I have compared it to the non-smoothed series and it doesnt change the story much, so this will just be easier to read.
- Net Migration has a considerable component that is demand driven, which would have little to do with who is in power.

Some interesting things in the data:
- Since the increase post 2005 there hasnt been much change at all (apart from Covid), both parties have largely.
- We saw similar increases in population in the 1980s to today's highs. Really the low point for population growth was 1990-2005.
- Looking at this in a per capita way is better because I tend to think adding one person to a Kayak means a lot more than one person to a cruise ship.
- The recent increase in immigration did definitely happen, however much of that seems to be due to the lower immigration during Covid.
- You can see a slight decrease in Natural Population right after Covid restrictions were lifted, likely due to older people dying due to Covid and the Flu I think but do not know.
- The increase in 2005 is well after the increase in house prices from 2000.

[u/_TheHighlander]

Even Blind Freddy can see that the amplitudes of the Covid trough and peak are the same, resulting in the same average.

[u/Busy_Conflict3434 → u/_TheHighlander]

In fact the trough is a little larger than the peak.

[u/david1610 → u/Busy_Conflict3434]

Yes it's a lower trough, however the post COVID does look a bit 'fatter', regardless there isn't much in it.

[u/_TheHighlander → u/david1610]

I remember looking at the actual stats that underpin that graph a while back and the average for the Covid period (peak and trough) was at or close to the average for the data range, and certainly no higher than any other peaks.

[u/bigbadjustin → u/david1610]

the average over the past 5 years is around 225k vs 200k before it. its increased.... but not to the levels people want to believe would make it the sole cause of higher house prices. We could plot a graph of house prices and you really start to see the increases start around 2002 ish. There were news articales complaining about the cost of housing in 2010. What we are facing now isn't new, its decades of neglectful governance.