Rockhampton Region: mid-term review of the Economic Development Strategy

Rockhampton's economy is growing faster than the number of people and homes needed to sustain it. The strategy's jobs and output ambitions are being met, so the next phase turns on population, housing supply and liveability. Any region with a strong employment story and a thin housing pipeline can ask the same question: what happens when the workers we need can't find a place to live?

Rockhampton was two-thirds of the way through its 2023–2028 Economic Development Strategy. A great deal had changed since the strategy was written, including post-COVID recovery, the critical minerals investment cycle, defence sector advances and a tight housing market. A new council would take office in 2028.

The review wasn't about starting again. Council needed to know where to reshape the final year of the strategy and where the next plan should start. The evidence had to hold up with council leadership, the business community and state government.

They wanted to understand:

• Is the region tracking towards its aspirations, or operating in business-as-usual conditions?
• Which enablers of growth, particularly housing, are now limiting the sectors that are performing well?
• What does the incoming council need to see to start from a shared evidence base?

We worked with Council's team to build on the 2021 Economic Health Check and the evidence behind the current strategy. The review drew on modelled economic data from NIEIR, ABS Census and building approvals, Tourism Research Australia, CommBank card spending data and the 2025 Advance Rockhampton business survey. We compared Rockhampton with Toowoomba, Mackay, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Townsville, neighbouring Livingstone and the Regional Queensland average.

Three connected pieces of analysis sat at the core: a strategy progress assessment against the strategy's impact measures, an economic resilience assessment and a housing analysis framed as an economic capacity issue.

This enabled assessment of:

• jobs, output, construction, visitation, economic diversity, population and migration against the strategy's impact measures
• industry structure, comparative advantage and labour market conditions
• housing affordability, supply and the workers most exposed to housing stress
• the major projects and macroeconomic forces shaping the outlook to 2032

• Growth is outpacing the resident base: Full-time-equivalent jobs grew 3.4 per cent a year over the three years to 2024/25, ahead of Regional Queensland (3.2 per cent), while population grew just 0.9 per cent a year, around half the regional rate. Net migration turned positive (+46 a year, from –94) but eased towards flat in 2025. This matters because, as unemployment fell from 6.4 to 4.6 per cent between June and December 2025, worker availability becomes the central limit on growth. The next phase of the strategy needs to focus on attracting and keeping people, not only creating jobs.
• Headline affordability hides a squeeze on essential workers: The median house price of $625,000 (December 2025) was the lowest of the comparable centres, around $185,000 below the Regional Queensland median. Even so, renting an entry-level house takes 55 to 62 per cent of post-tax income for carers, receptionists and nursing support workers, well above the 30 per cent housing stress threshold. These are among the region's fastest-growing roles. Housing is an economic capacity issue, and it needs to be treated that way in the strategy.
• Investment is strong, but skewed away from housing: Non-residential building approvals nearly doubled to about $160 million a year (from $88 million), driven by health, energy and industrial projects. Residential approvals stayed flat at about $108 million despite a rental vacancy rate of 0.8 per cent. Over five years, house approvals equalled just 2.2 per cent of 2021 house stock, the weakest pipeline of all peer centres. This points to supply, not demand, as the lever to pull.
• Diversification is slowing a rising concentration, not reversing it: Economic concentration rose by just 17 index points over the last three years, against 67 previously, as growth broadened into construction, transport and manufacturing. Rockhampton is still more concentrated than Regional Queensland. Card spending data also shows the surrounding inland catchment drives much of visitor spend, so the consumer economy is tied to the resource and agricultural districts it serves. Council can lean on this broadening trend, while recognising that reliance on a few sectors remains a resilience risk.

Council's list of current and upcoming major projects totals around $2.8 billion across 15 projects, led by the $1.9 billion Rockhampton Ring Road and the Rockhampton Hospital program. More than 4,100 dwellings are under construction across eight estates.

The 2026–2028 build concentrates into a tight labour and cost market. Queensland construction costs rose 7.1 per cent in 2025 and the Fitzroy region carries the state's largest construction labour demand. The wider environment has also turned more cautious, with the cash rate at 4.35 per cent and national growth downgraded to around 1.75 per cent for 2026–27.

The 2027 final year of the strategy, and a new council in 2028, are the next decision points.

• Council has a clear, evidence-based read on which of the strategy’s impact measures are on track and which aren’t, at the point where there’s still time to adjust
• Housing is now framed as an economic capacity issue, with data on the workers most exposed to rental stress, giving Council a firmer basis for its own planning and its conversations with state government
• The benchmarking against Toowoomba, Mackay, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Townsville and Livingstone gives Council a consistent reference point for measuring progress through to the end of the strategy
• The review gives Council an agreed starting point for the next strategy and for briefing the incoming council in 2028

If your council is halfway through a strategy and wants to know whether it's on track, we'd be glad to talk it through. We can help you build an evidence base that holds up with council, business and state government.

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