Demographics
Brisbane is one of the fastest-growing capital cities in Australia in terms of population and employment. Our residents are young and skilled, highly educated and culturally-diverse.
Population and growth
- South-East Queensland is Australia’s fastest growing metropolitan region and the Australian Bureau of Statistics places Brisbane’s population at more than 3.9 million by 2056.
- Brisbane is currently home to two million people.
- Brisbane’s population growth has consistently been a high performer of all the Australian capital cities, recording average annual growth of 2.3 per cent between 2001 and 2008.
- Much of this population growth has been driven by overseas and interstate migration, which has been the case for many decades.
- Brisbane remains one of Australia’s fastest-growing cities, with the largest overall increase (21,200 people in 2008/09) occurring here. In recent times, statistics show an average of 16,000 new residents moved to Brisbane each year.
Our residents
- The largest age demographic is the 24 to 40 year old age group, representing skilled workers.
- At 14 per cent, Brisbane has a 4 per cent higher proportion of graduates with bachelor degrees than the national average.
- Our community is extremely multicultural , with more than 28 per cent of Brisbane’s population born overseas and more than 16 per cent of households speaking a language other than English at home. Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin, Samoan and Vietnamese are amongst some of the most commonly spoken languages.