A deeper dive into interstate population movemements
After contemplating what was driving shifts in net interstate migration trends I decided to dig a little deeper into the data.
Over the 12 months to September 2025, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that 358,226 residents moved interstate which represents 1.3% of the total estimated resident population.
The number of people moving interstate was the lowest since the 12 months to March 2021, 12 months into the pandemic when moving was difficult. In terms of the percentage of the population moving interstate, it was the lowest on-record.
It’s not something I am going to attempt to answer in this article but it would be interesting to further investigate why a smaller proportion of the population is moving interstate.
Let’s take a look at the individual states and territories.
New South Wales
Net interstate migration for New South Wales over the 12 months to September 2025 resulted in a loss of 23,353 residents which was the smallest loss since the 12 months to June 2020 (-22,450).
The latest figure consists of 81,654 arrivals which was the fewest number of arrivals since June 2021. It also consisted of 105,007 departures which was the fewest annual departures since March 2021.
