Scenic Rim's Strong Economic Growth Outshines The Sunshine State

It's the Scenic Rim's time to shine, with new research showing greater economic growth and employment than Queensland's averages.

Mayor Greg Christensen said that information sourced from the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research for the 2017-18 financial year shone a spotlight on the Scenic Rim as a region of growth and opportunity.

"The number of jobs in the region grew by more than 900 to 15,253 from the previous financial year," he said.

"In addition, Gross Regional Product (GRP) increased to $1.768 billion, the highest dollar value in the life of this region.

"The most pleasing outcome of the data shows that the negative trend between 2013 and 2015 has now been reversed and Scenic Rim has a strong trajectory of growth at 3.3 per cent, which is the highest in this term of Council, and 50 per cent above the state average of 2.2 per cent.

"This growth puts the Scenic Rim ahead of the Lockyer Valley local government area which recorded 2.3 per cent growth, Ipswich at 3.1 per cent and only fractionally behind the Gold Coast which achieved 3.7 per cent growth in 2017-18.

"With a six per cent unemployment rate, the Scenic Rim was below the Queensland average of 7.6 per cent and the increase in the number of jobs in our region was spread across a number of industry sectors, with construction, agriculture, education and training and health care and social assistance leading the charge."

Cr Christensen said the diversity in the areas of jobs growth provided resilience for the local employment sector and that Council would continue to explore avenues for broadening the Scenic Rim's business and industry base to build further sustainable employment growth in the region.

"I firmly believe that creating more jobs in the region so that people can live and work and enjoy recreational opportunities inside the region is the best thing we can do to reduce congestion on our roads to the north and reinforce the strength of families involved together in our community," he said.

Ongoing investment in tourism and hospitality by the business community has helped boost the Scenic Rim's economy and this has been supported by Council's ongoing investment in the region's roads and bridges as a key foundation for continued economic confidence.

Investment by businesses which have recognised the opportunities presented by the Scenic Rim have generated strong revenue and jobs growth across all sectors, improving the region's ability to withstand negative shocks to any one sector.

"While the latest statistics are cause for celebration, we also recognise that there are some industry sectors that are currently doing it tough," Cr Christensen said.

"We understand that what happened with the hailstorm in the Kalbar late last year was really hard and will continue to cause negative impact for some time to come and we understand some industries such as the dairy industry are struggling.

"We are going to explore, within Council's reasonable scope, how we support these parts of our region through these challenging times, some of which will require transition to some new approaches."

Cr Christensen said that one of the challenges confronting the Scenic Rim was keeping high value primary production corridors generating sustainable income so that farming was an attractive employment option, not just a lifestyle choice.

"While we have an exciting platform to move forward, we understand that there are challenges, that there's more work to do and this is no time for us to rest on our laurels," he said.

Information has been sourced from the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research (NIEIR) compiled and presented in economy.id available at https://economy.id.com.au/scenic-rim