Australia is the only nation on the planet to claim the resources of an entire continent. Not even the Americans (as yet) make such a claim.

But unlike the US, Australia isn’t blessed with an abundance of fertile soils or rivers the scale of the Mississippi that might support vast rural populations and big cities in the interior.

Indeed our Murray-Darling Basin, for example, supports a modest population base when compared with the US mid-west, which includes cities the scale of Chicago (2024 population nine million).

Heading towards 28 million

Nevertheless, Australia continues to grow strongly off a relatively modest population base (which in 2025 rounds up to 28 million).

In new data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in March, it is evident that 3.7 million net extra residents were added to the Australian population across the decade to June 2024. Much of this growth was added to our big capital cities.

Also evident across this decade has been the trend of Australians of all age groups spilling out of the capitals into lifestyle zones (sea change, tree change) located closer to or along the coast.

Other Aussies continued a well-established trend of moving from the towns and the farmlands of the interior to capital or big regional cities for retirement, lifestyle or education, training and job opportunities.

In the accompanying map I show areas of net population growth (blue) and loss (red) across the decade to June 2024 by local government area (and other lands). The top 10 growth areas by local government area across the past decade are expected to carry much of the burden of growth during the next decade too, as shown in the accompanying table.

Australia hasn’t produced an inland city similar in concept, let alone in scale, to Phoenix (2024 population five million, up from 200,000 in 1946), which is located in the US desert state of Arizona.

But, then, neither has Australia developed an equivalent of the 1936-opened and desert-located Hoover Dam, on the Arizona-Nevada border. It was always easier, I suspect, to consolidate the coastal capitals and to cultivate adjacent lifestyle zones including, for example, the Gold Coast.

The picture that emerges is of an Australian continent that is losing population from some (remote) areas and gaining in others. It’s a familiar story: the cropping lands west of the Great Divide concede labour (and indeed entire families) to bigger communities located on or near the coast.

Mechanisation may have delivered greater productivity to Australia’s agricultural sector but it also has thinned the population across our nation’s farmlands and country towns.

And this raises questions about the extent to which we rely on vital and viable country towns to deliver the services needed by today’s ever mechanising, digitising, aggregating, drone-ifying farms – farms that evolved as family enterprises but now are upscaling and, in many cases, adopting sophisticated agribusiness models of operation.

It’s almost as if we need a demographic audit flowing from, say, the August 2026 census to measure the distribution of essential workers across the interior.

The role of essential workers

What are the key ratios of general practitioners, dentists, police officers, schoolteachers, registered nurses, aged-care workers per 1000 residents in the towns and villages of regional and remote Australia?

And why wouldn’t such an audit be used as a guide to attract (and to incentivise) essential workers to move to under-provisioned communities?

How effective would it be for a mayor or the chief executive of a municipality losing population to argue that their community ranks among the nation’s most poorly provisioned with key workers? Demographic facts matter in the allocation of resources and in the harnessing of goodwill and effort.

Indeed, there is a point at which a contracting community loses the critical mass needed to support a GP clinic, a pharmacy, a primary school, a police station, a church service, a football or netball team.

But, then, perhaps the decade ahead will show a turnaround in the fortunes of rural and remote Australia.

And to some extent this may well be the case. After all, many Australians fled the capitals during the Covid pandemic; perhaps some have committed to stay.

Together with data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kannan I have assembled state-based population projections by LGA for all states and territories for the decade to June 2035 (see accompanying map).

Outlook for the decade to June 2035

In aggregate, the state-based projections show a net increase in the Australian population of 3.6 million across the next 10 years, which is marginally higher than the ABS’s medium projection of 3.5 million. (Personally, I think the outlook is likely to be closer to the four million mark because of the need for labour to offset the impact of retiring baby boomers.)

Nevertheless, the broad outlook is for a continuation of established trends including labour losses in cropping areas but also for seemingly extensive “turnaround growth” in many formerly losing areas, especially across regional Western Australia.

The west’s demographers may have picked up on strengthening Indigenous populations or on a mining trend, or it could be a bit of “positive thinking” about growth returning to the regions, and which I generally agree with where the “growing regions” comprise lifestyle destinations on the coast.

Then again, a small number of net additional people scattered across an already modest population base (in the West) can easily change the outlook for a community from loss (red) to growth (blue).

There’s also an interesting turnaround in the demographic fortunes in parts of the Eyre Peninsula: perhaps this is Adelaideans seeking the serenity of the peninsula’s croplands that spread to the horizon under Clancy’s “everlasting stars”?

I also like the “island effect” created when a regional town grows seemingly at the expense of surrounding, contracting, communities. This is especially evident in Victoria’s Horsham Rural City, in Western Australia’s Narrogin Shire and in South Australia’s Orroroo Carrieton District Council area.

One factor driving this trend could be farmers retiring into town from surrounding farmlands. However, the problem is that often even growing towns are losing the workforce that is required to deliver the care services needed by inflowing retirees and lifestylers.

Retirees in, (taxpaying) labour out

This particular trend is evident in, for example, the city of Horsham in Victoria’s Wimmera where the population is projected (by the state government) to grow from 20,506 in 2025 to 21,024 in 2035, which is a net increase of 516 residents (see accompanying chart).

However, while there is expected to be (modest) growth in the township overall, this comprises 936 net extra residents aged 70-plus, which is partially offset by 300 fewer residents under the age of 34.

It’s a case of retirees in and young workers and their kids and teenagers out.

The same trend is evident in Charters Towers Regional Council area, which is located inland from Townsville, where the state’s projections show fewer babies, kids and teenagers but many more residents aged 70-plus (see accompanying chart).

Here is a community that surely will struggle to attract (and retain) aged-care workers to service existing local (let alone more inbound) retirees when many in the existing workforce aged 35-64 are outbound.

These numbers are problematic. And I suspect this is the case across much of Australia’s “red bit” interior. Either the projections are wrong or there’s an almighty aged-care/healthcare crunch coming.

Or maybe we need something like a department of labour force planning that draws on a demographic audit using latest census results to shuffle (that is, incentivise) skilled aged-care and healthcare workers to cities and towns (for example, Charters Towers and Horsham) to match demand.

Or we could simply ignore the issue and force locals to travel long distances to get the healthcare service required.

Surely part of the solution is to ensure that our immigration program brings in labour with the requisite skills and disposition to work in rural and remote locations. And to some extent this is precisely what is happening.

Our immigrant aged-care workforce is currently dominated by workers from India, The Philippines and Nepal (see graphic).

The club sandwich generation

Aged care is a highly charged and, for many, highly emotional issue. It affects the aged, of course, but it also reverberates down through the generations.

It is the so-called sandwich generation, men and women (but mostly women) in their 50s who take on the responsibility of managing 80-something mums and dads (including ageing in-laws) before and after they go into aged care.

Circumstances vary but providing unpaid care to older family members can be a demanding and emotional experience requiring daily calls and support with medications, appointments and ensuring that everyday essentials are in place.

This cohort of now Generation Xers (born 1964-81) finds itself sandwiched between the needs of elderly parents and the needs of 20-something adult kids struggling with relationships, work, buying a house.

Toss in their own health, work and relationship issues and there’s yet another (that is, a third) layer to the so-called sandwich generation. Indeed, this caring cohort is looking a lot like the club sandwich generation these days.

Delivering services in Aussie hot spots

In places such as the City of Sydney, the City of the Gold Coast and Melbourne’s fast-growing City of Wyndham (including Werribee) it’s a very different story.

State projections show net growth across all cohorts in the decade to come (see graphic).

These communities will need more kindergartens, schools, aged-care facilities, hospitals, shopping centres, houses and apartments, sporting and cultural facilities. And the reason is that all three municipalities are demographic hot spots attracting a mix of workers, residents, immigrants, students and more.

The challenge for the City of Sydney in the decade to come will be to accommodate roughly 4000 net extra residents a year in an already intensively built-up urban area. I reckon that level of growth coverts to roughly 2500 net extra apartments a year.

In Wyndham and on the Gold Coast the projected growth of up to 138,000 across the decade will require provisioning for a net extra 5000 households accommodating a net extra 13,000 residents a year (or thereabouts).

These two places (Gold Coast and Wyndham) will likely rank as the fastest growing on the continent in the coming decade.

It’s interesting, don’t you think, that Australian population growth in the 2020s and 2030s should focus like a blowtorch on two locations, on two quite different lifestyle concepts, that embody the essence of modern Australian values: the sea-change beach lifestyle and affordable suburban living in a global city.

Matching workforce with needs

The issue in the delivery of services isn’t so much the quantum of growth projected for the coming decade, it’s the cohort surges inherent within this growth including the 20s (due to the arrival of students and immigrant workers), the 40s (driven by middle-aged millennials), and the 70s and 80s (now populated by ageing baby boomers).

On top of this is the fact that towns in Australia’s loss areas (the so-called red bits) can and will attract retiring farmers and at the same time lose local workers (if the projections are correct).

Australia and the Western world more generally haven’t had to contend with demographic issues such as this previously.

Indeed, we are the first generation in history to have the responsibility (and the privilege) of caring for a large proportion of the community beyond the working stage of the life cycle.

The problems of ageing and of labour force planning are exacerbated in Australia because of the vastness and the sparseness of our continent. In comparison, shuffling skilled labour from one part of, say, The Netherlands (2024 population 18 million) to another is easier when it’s possible to drive across the nation in an afternoon.

Our geography and our cohort-surging demography make it tougher to get the skills to the places where they are needed most.

We live in a vast continent and of course we wouldn’t have it any other way.

However, this also means we need to be world’s best practice in planning and delivering services to places where skills and services are most needed, from Horsham and Charters Towers on the eastern seaboard and to the Shire of Narrogin in Western Australia.

Our objective should not be to “eventually get there”, it should be to plan now for better managing the demographic dilemmas that lie ahead.

Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group. Data by data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kannan.