THE good times just keep rolling on for the Bathurst economy.
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Last year, Bathurst Regional Council’s economic consultants ID Consulting delivered an annual report that showed from 2013 to 2015 the region had recorded its strongest three consecutive years of economic growth.
But the record did not last long.
The high mark recorded at the end of 2015 had been bettered by the end of 2016 – and that can only be good news for all of us.
The ID data is delivering in black and white what most of us in the region know already – that Bathurst is a great place to live, learn, work and grow a family.
Just consider the figures: Bathurst’s population in 2016 had grown to 43,080 – up 1.86 per cent on a year earlier. That’s an extra 787 people in the Bathurst local government area and represents the region’s strongest annual population growth since 2009.
Jobs growth in Bathurst from 2015 to 2016 was 3.8 per cent, primarily driven new jobs in the education and training, construction, wholesale trade and accommodation industries.
Even better, the number of unemployment rate in the Bathurst region had fallen to just 3.85 per cent by the end of 2016.
That’s a figure well below the NSW unemployment rate of 5.85 per cent and, again, the best figure for the Bathurst region in almost a decade.
But, just as the Western Advocate said following last year’s report from ID, the numbers do not tell the whole story.
As has been said so many times before, the key to Bathurst’s economic strength – and what sets our region apart from so much of regional NSW – is its resilience and diversity.
Unlike so many regional cities that rely heavily on mining money – with economies that rise and fall on the vagaries of stock markets and commodity prices – Bathurst’s economy has many strings to its bow.
Indeed, the ID Consulting report found that jobs growth in the reason could be attributed to a number of sectors, including education and training, wholesale trade and accommodation services.
If one sector is ever doing it tough in Bathurst, there are jobs in other sectors to keep us going.
That might mean we don’t see the dizzy heights associated with a mining boom, but nor do we suffer the terrible troughs of a mining bust. Why would you want to live anywhere else?