Migration away from capital cities has hit a five-year high as the number of people moving to regional areas surrounding the ACT continues to increase, a new report shows.
A report from Commonwealth Bank and the Regional Australia Institute found people continue to swap the city for the country, with the number of exiles hitting a record high of more than 16 per cent for the first three months of the year.
The nearby Queanbeyan-Palerang region saw a 28 per cent increase in migration compared with the same period last year, while the Snowy Monaro experienced a rise of 20 per cent.
While not as high, the Goulburn-Mulwaree region experienced an 8 per cent rise in migration. However, not all regions were as lucky, the Yass Valley saw a drop of 3 per cent compared to 2021.
The institute's Regional Movers Index report, based on data from the bank's 10 million customers, found far more people are moving out of cities - particularly Sydney and Melbourne - than in the two years before the pandemic, with a 26.7 per cent higher migration rate.
The institute's chief economist, Dr Kim Houghton said the trend away from metropolitan areas had been ongoing for at least 15 years.
"We've seen a general flow of people from the cities to the regions and this has been accentuated and when we did our research it was pretty clear that the pull factors, things that people in cities liked about living in the regions, were stronger than the push factors," he said.
However, people are once again moving from regional areas to the city as pandemic lockdowns lift.
The report found 4.6 per cent of internal population flow was movement from the regions to the city, bigger than the COVID-era average.
Millennials and their young families make up the majority of people moving to the top five regional hotspots - Ceduna, Mount Gambier and Port Augusta in South Australia; Moorabool in Victoria and Queensland's Western Downs.
Those areas tend to be attractive due to their diverse economies - made up of agriculture, hospitality, manufacturing and health care - Commonwealth Bank's regional and agribusiness general manager Paul Fowler said.
People aged between 25 and 40 move for cheaper housing and job opportunities in the regions, where there are 85,000 vacancies, he said.
"[There's] incredible employment opportunities for families, millennials, gen X-ers, to move to the regions and support the thriving economic and social communities," Mr Fowler said.
"We're seeing a number of centres really benefit from population growth and for those smaller cities and towns or communities, it really does drive significant change in terms of business conditions, housing conditions for those regions given the influx of population."
Dr Houghton said long-term trends show 20 per cent of the Australian population turns over every five years as people move for careers and lifestyle.
"We're a very mobile country by international standards," he said.
"The notion that this is a one-off move, and people will stay in a place like Moorabool for the rest of their lives just doesn't happen."
The institute is wrapping up consultation with more than 2000 stakeholders on Friday for its 10-year national regionalisation framework, which its chief executive Liz Ritchie hopes will lead a shift in mindset around how the country sees regional Australia.
In initial findings the surveys found over 80 per cent of respondents believed that Australia's population needed to be more evenly distributed and over 90 per cent agreed that services and infrastructure needed to be rebalanced.
"I think it speaks to the issue that for the first time in probably the last 100 years the spotlight is genuinely on regional Australia and what we're seeing is a societal shift and what I call the great regionalisation," Ms Ritchie said.
- with AAP
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