Wave of Launceston migrations subside, West Tamar population still growing

The latest Regional Movers Index report reveals more people are moving from Launceston than to Launceston.

Gross inflows from capital cities in the year to March 2023 were down 30 per cent on the year prior, while the number of people moving in the opposite direction grew by 34 per cent.

The West Tamar enjoyed the most growth of any local government area across the year, securing 1 per cent of national migrations, despite experiencing a 74 per cent drop in the number of capital city dwellers moving to the area.

READ MORE: As cheap as they'll get? Launceston house prices rising after yearlong decline

Regional Australia Institute chief economist Dr Kim Houghton said declining migrations to Launceston followed a considerable population influx during COVID.

"Launceston was really one of our hotspot growth areas for the first three or four issues of the Index - going back to early 2021 it was consistently in the growth areas so it saw a lot of growth of inflows," he said.

"I know there's big concerns in Tassie about housing availability and affordability and a lot of services being really stretched due to that rapid growth, so it may be that some of that really high growth had started to tail off a bit."

Nevertheless, Commonwealth Bank executive general manager Paul Fowler believes Tasmania's strong economy has the state in good stead to attract more population growth moving forward.

"In the CommSec State of the States report we now rank Tasmania as the strongest performing economy across the country and it's the 11^th time in the last three years that Tasmania has held that spot," he said.

"There's some thriving economic conditions across the state and undoubtedly that'll continue to attract population over time."

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