Population decline raises concerns over state’s future growth prospects

More and more young Tasmanians are choosing to make a life for themselves on the mainland, and it’s affecting the state’s population growth. Here’s why they are leaving.

Lisa Denny is a Tasmanian demographe.. PIC: MATT THOMPSON

A lack of secure, full-time well-paid jobs is driving an increasing number of people to leave the state in search of better opportunities elsewhere, a new study has found.

Workplace demographer Lisa Denny’s Leaving Tasmania report noted the number of people arriving in the state is declining and departures are increasing — and are highest among the 20 to 40 age group.

Her research underlines concerns expressed by leading econmist Saul Eslake, who wrote in Wednesday’s Mercury that the population decline could slow the state’s economic growth

In the year ended June 2023, 15,222 people left Tasmania to live interstate, compared with 12,271 in 2013, an increase of 24 per cent over the decade.

Labor seized on the report, saying ten years of Liberal government was prompting an exodus of young people from the state at the rate of a planeload a week.

As part of the study, Dr Denny received responses from 127 former residents of Tasmania.

“It is clear from the responses to the Leaving Tasmania survey that a lack of jobs which are secure, full-time and well paid are the key reasons underpinning people’s decisions to leave Tasmania,” she wrote.

“Ultimately, the pull of career progression opportunities for themselves, their partner or their children lure working-age Tasmanians to live elsewhere in Australia.

“Six main themes emerged from the analysis of the open-ended responses; employment and working conditions were the overwhelming reason for leaving Tasmania, along with family; quality of life including culture, social networks and the environment, education, including the university and its offerings; lack of public services; and governance and parochialism in the state.

“Many respondents also lamented they did not want to leave but had to out of necessity.

Among the responses: “I couldn’t find work for years after graduating”; “No employment opportunities and very low wages”; Limited career prospects for recent graduates”; and “Very limited career opportunities at a senior level”.

Dr Denny said if the trend continued, Tasmania’s population growth rate was likely to slow further, and the population would age at a faster rate.

“As a result, it is likely, that Tasmania’s public services will continue to deteriorate. The risk is a snowballing effect,” she wrote.

“The next Tasmanian Government needs to critically develop a population policy for the state.”

Labor’s Shane Broad said the outflow of people from the state was a bad sign.

“After ten years of Liberal Government, Tasmania is heading in the wrong direction, with a planeload of young people leaving the state every week,” he said.

“If the Liberals haven’t fixed it in ten years, we cannot risk giving them 14 years.”

Treasurer Michael Ferguson said the state’s population had grown every year under the Liberals.

“There’s now 573,000 people calling Tasmania home, that’s 59,000 more than when we came to government,” he said.

“Under Labor and the Greens, Tasmania’s population went backwards, people literally left the state in droves.

“Shane Broad has become a compulsive prophet of doom which does nothing positive for the State.”

In a Talking Point article in Wednesday’s Mercury, leading Tasmanian economist Saul Eslake said rising prices and slow wage growth were contributing to a familiar cycle.

He wrote the state “may be on the cusp of – or indeed may already have entered – a cycle like the ones we experienced in the 1990s, and again between 2010 and 2015 – in which declining (or even negative) population growth acts as a drag on economic and employment growth, in turn prompting more working-age Tasmanians to depart for the mainland and fewer working-age mainlanders to move here, leading to a further slowing in population and economic growth, and so on”.