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Queenslanders have become accustomed to news of victories over other states this year. From rugby league to AFL, 2025 has been a year of many wins. This week the ABS released the State Accounts for 2024-25, continuing the good news for the State. This dataset is released once a year and provides insight into the performance of Australia's state and territory economies.
Queensland recorded the strongest GSP growth (the state version of GDP and the broadest measure of state economic activity) of the states, growing by 2.2% over 2024-25, picking up from 1.7% in 2023-24. This compares to growth of just 0.9% and 1.1% from our eastern state counterparts, New South Wales and Victoria, respectively. Queensland also grew at a faster rate than Western Australia (1.3%), South Australia (1.0%), Tasmania (1.0%) and the Northern Territory (1.0%), with only the ACT (3.5%) having a stronger outturn.
The Queensland economy has traditionally benefitted from strong population growth relative to most other states, with its attractive lifestyle helping to support healthy interstate migration. This continued to be the case in 2024-25, with the State Accounts data implying population growth in Queensland outperformed the national average by around 0.2 percentage points. Even accounting for population growth, Queensland was the only major state to record positive per capita (i.e. population-adjusted) GSP growth over the financial year.
One of the key drivers of the solid Queensland result was household consumption. Household consumption in the state grew by 1.3%, higher than the 0.8% and 0.9% growth recorded in New South Wales and Victoria, respectively. At first glance, 1.3% might seem soft compared to the headline GSP outturn of 2.2%; however, this is easily explained by a statistical quirk of the ABS. The ABS treated the electricity subsidies received by Queenslanders as government consumption, artificially suppressing measured household consumption. We expect that household consumption growth would have been north of 2% if not for this statistical treatment.
Queensland households were well-placed to outspend many of their interstate counterparts. Gross household disposable incomes grew strongly in Queensland, even when adjusting for solid population growth, recording per capita growth of 8.1% over the financial year. For context, the national average growth rate was 5.8%. Queensland's labour market held up well over the year, with the unemployment rate averaging around 4% and employment growing by 2.2%, a stronger result than the national average. Sentiment amongst homeowners likely benefitted from house prices growing strongly. Brisbane house prices rose by 7.7% over the year to June 2025, compared to 1.8% in Sydney and 0.3% in Melbourne, with this trend continuing in recent months.
Higher house prices are partially a reflection of supply fundamentals, with Queensland, like the rest of the nation, in need of more houses. On this front there was some good news, with dwelling investment rising by 4%, after a couple of years of weakness. Another area of strength was government consumption, which was up 6.5% over the year. Government investment was also robust, growing by 4.8% over the year, with the state’s solid pipeline of infrastructure projects adding support.
Net exports had little overall impact on the Queensland economy, contributing a very modest amount to growth over the financial year. However, this was partially due to weather impacts and operational disruptions at some of the state's coal mines, which weighed on coal exports. This impact is expected to be temporary, with recent data indicating coal exports have begun to recover. Helping to offset some of the negative impacts of mining exports, was the agricultural sector. Whilst weather was unhelpful for miners, it provided good conditions for both livestock and crop production. Additionally, one of Queensland's key agricultural exports, beef, has benefitted from restricted supply conditions in the US. A softer area of the economy was business investment, although this challenge is not unique to Queensland. Businesses were cautious in their investment plans over the financial year, with business investment falling by 1.8%.
Looking forward, the Queensland economy remains in a good position to record ongoing solid growth.
The labour market has remained tight, with the unemployment rate sitting below the national average at 4.2% as of October. The Centre for Population projects Queensland population growth to continue to outstrip the national average by 0.2 percentage points in 2025-26. Additionally, the lagged impacts of three interest rate cuts this year will help underpin household consumption growth. Business investment is expected to stage a modest recovery, as firms also benefit from interest rate cuts and easing global uncertainty. The government sector will continue to provide support to the economy as the State works through its pipeline of infrastructure projects. With many factors working in the state's favour, Queensland Treasury's projection is for GSP growth to be a little higher than last financial year, at around 2¾% in 2025-26.
