Key findings by state

National Trends

• The drought breaking across large areas of Australia has given an enormous stimulus to Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing which grew by 22% compared to 2019-20. This industry contributes between 3% and 20% of regional economies, and its growth this past year was responsible for Rest of NSW and Rest of QLD experiencing positive growth – and potentially avoiding recession.
• International tourism in 2020-21 was only 3.5% of its pre-COVID levels, and domestic tourism only 80% of pre-COVID levels. Almost all cities and regions saw falls in their transport industries, with the strongest falls in tourism-reliant cities like Sydney and Melbourne and areas like regional Queensland.
  

VIC

• Greater Melbourne remained in recession, with GDP falling 1.6% in 2020/21. Melbourne’s second wave saw unemployment remaining between 7% and 8% from May to November 2021, and the labour force participation rate falling by 3 percentage points.
• Regional Victoria’s economy grew 3.9% driven predominantly by the agriculture industry; labour force participation surged when COVID-19 lockdown restrictions eased in October 2021 – but not enough to lift Victoria out of recession.

ACT

• The ACT’s economy grew by 2.8% in 2020-21, driven by public service and Professional services. The recent COVID lockdowns from August 2021 saw ACT suffer the largest loss of payroll jobs (more than 10%) of any state or territory during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. State final demand fell by 1.6% in the September 2021 quarter as a result.

QLD

• Regional Queensland showed growth last financial year while Brisbane suffered a sharp drop in GDP; this financial year, the tables have turned, and Brisbane grew by 3.9% while regional Queensland grew 0.8%.
• Brisbane’s growth has been due to most industries performing moderately well rather than any particular industry performing unusually strongly. Regional Queensland saw a recovery in Agriculture but continued to be hit by the loss of tourism and the decreasing prices and demand for LNG.
• Without Agriculture contributing 0.8% points of growth, Regional Queensland would have been close to falling into recession.

NSW

• Sydney was hit harder than regional NSW during COVID-19 lockdowns but rebounded with a modest 1.7% economic growth. Regional NSW avoided recession (1.1% growth) following a much-needed resurgence in the agriculture industry after the devastation of the drought and Black Summer bushfires.

TAS

• After narrowly avoiding recession last financial year, Tasmania’s economy rebounded strongly growing 3.8% in 2020, although the unemployment rate was slow to recover, reaching 5.1% in October 2021. Agriculture provided half of Tasmania’s growth followed by Health and Aged Care.
• Tasmania’s economy has been growing faster than Australia for the last four years, after growing more slowly since 2010.

SA

• South Australia had the strongest growth of all states and territories at 3.9% driven by growth in Agriculture and Manufacturing, Transport Equipment Manufacturing and Food Manufacturing.
• Adelaide’s labour force participation rate has now exceeded pre-COVID-19 levels (79%), and unemployment has trended downwards for most of 2021, falling from 7.8% in February to 4.5% in August
• Regional South Australia had the strongest growth of all the cities and regions at 8.4%, driven by bumper returns in Agriculture and strong growth in Manufacturing.

NT

• The Northern Territory’s economy avoided recession in 2019-20 but fell into recession in 2021 (-0.6% growth) due to a decline in Oil and Gas extraction as commodity prices fell and production volumes were reduced.