SOR 2021-22 – Industries and Incomes Across Australia’s Regions

Most of Australia’s international exports are produced in country and remote regions outside its major cities, but economic activity is increasingly organised from the metropolitan centres, where it generates high salary incomes. The metropolitan suburbs and the peripheral-metropolitan regions (those within an easy day-return of the city) gain supporting employment. Regional fortunes beyond the metropolitan peripheries depend on diversification away from agriculture which, thanks to increasing productivity, employs fewer and fewer workers. The report describes these relationships and concludes with the consequences for metropolitan housing costs.