Hard to notice perhaps, but the equivalent populations of Coogee and Manly left Sydney last financial year for other parts, driven out by the high price of housing and the lure of cheaper homes in regional NSW and Queensland.
New Bureau of Statistics regional population figures show 90 per cent of the 33,282 people who departed were from the eastern parts of Sydney including the northern beaches, north shore, eastern suburbs and inner west.
The decline in western Sydney was only about 2800.
Counterbalancing the exodus, the regions of Blacktown and south-western Sydney had a net inflow of people from other parts of Australia.
According to the Herald’s Matt Wade, some neighbourhoods in Sydney’s north-west and south-west registered double-digit population growth rates in 2024-25.
KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said new infrastructure – including the North-West Metro, the M12 motorway and coming access to Western Sydney Airport – had helped reshape perceptions of western Sydney.
“Job opportunities are also encouraging more people to view the region in a different light,” he said.
But there is no getting away from the desultory statistic that the number of residents shrank in over 50 suburbs, many of them in the city’s most affluent areas. Those suburbs in the eastern part of Sydney with ageing and wealthy populations have seen families take flight and their streets emptying of children as deaths outnumbering births became an everyday fact of life.
And in a trend that could be a glimpse of Sydney’s lopsided dystopian future, experts believe deaths will continue to outnumber births in these suburbs.
In fact, a great baby divide has emerged across our city as the number of births in the western suburbs climbs while in inner-city neighbourhoods, babies are relatively scarce. During the past decade, births have fallen by 20 per cent or more in the eastern suburbs, north shore, northern beaches and inner west districts while rising solidly in the Blacktown, outer west and south-west regions.
The outflow of people not withstanding, the arrival of overseas migrants saw Sydney’s population rise by 75,000 – or 1.4 per cent – in 2024-25. But, despite the surge in immigration numbers it was the slowest population growth rate since the COVID pandemic and down from 2 per cent the previous year.
Greater Sydney was home to 5.65 million people in June 2025, and it remains Australia’s most populated city. But Melbourne, which reached 5.35 million, is rapidly closing the gap; a decade ago, Sydney had 350,000 more people than Victoria’s capital, but that has shrunk to about 200,000.
The population narrowing is another downside of Sydney’s property boom.
Three years ago Premier Chris Minns unveiled his signature policy, a rezoning shake-up that would dramatically increase density, especially around transport hubs, to create capacity for some 170,000 new homes. Last month, the government announced it delivered 3500 new public, community and affordable homes.
But Melbourne has outpaced Sydney in home construction, helping to maintain a more affordable, though still expensive, housing market that attract workers.
Clearly, there is still more work to be done in supplying new housing – and these figures reveal that the new stock must be made available across the board, not just in growth areas to the west of the city.
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