Economic fundamentals

Overall trends
On average, regional Australia has similar levels of competitiveness to metropolitan areas for many aspects of economic fundamentals.

Looking at economic fundamentals from a state and regional perspective, there is not a clear pattern of competitiveness. Instead each area typically has their own source of competitive advantage while other indicators reveal potential future challenges and opportunities.

The exception to this is regional Western Australia which consistently ranks as highly competitive (or the most competitive for the majority of indicators. Our Heartland Regions are another unusual case which collectively rank most competitive on four of the seven indicators.

Our greatest competitive challenge – A post mining boom world
The concentrated economic impact of the mining boom is strikingly evident in regional Western Australia’s economic fundamentals. Regional Western Australia has the strongest economic fundamentals across worker productivity, business turnover, levels of investment and structural value of buildings.

Change is well underway in key commodity markets such as iron ore and new investment in mining projects is now waning. This will affect the economic fundamentals in regional Western Australia and other mining regions. Managing the transition by leveraging or improving competitiveness in other themes will be essential to secure the long term benefits of the boom.

A theme analysis is available here

The full report is available here