Gold Coast at risk as a 3rd of its Workforce forced to live outside of the City by 2032, MATUSIK Report finds
Prepared by Hunt Media – Published OceanRoad Magazine 10 August 2026 – Article Link
The Gold Coast is on course for 150,000 of its workers, or more than a third of its employment base, living outside the city by 2032 as a housing market that has become one of Australia’s least affordable pushes its key workforce south into northern New South Wales and north into Logan and Brisbane, according to property analyst Michael Matusik.
The finding in Matusik’s latest research exposes a growing pressure point for a city that has delivered one of the strongest economic performances in the country over the past five years while steadily losing the ability to house the workforce driving it.
The report reveals the housing issue goes beyond the headline affordability metrics, with the problem also having a knock-on effect on a range of key growth factors from a skills shortage to debilitating congestion on major roads such as the M1.
Among the report’s key findings is the Gold Coast economy has grown 32 per cent to $58 billion since Covid and is set to surge to $72 billion by 2032.
Employment has grown at an equally fast pace with some 385,000 people now working on the Gold Coast after creating 89,000 jobs since Covid, a lift of 30 per cent that rates the city among the best results of any local government area in Australia.
“Employment is punching above its weight and so is development, but the critical issue facing the Gold Coast if it is to maintain its growth momentum over the next five years and beyond is to provide housing that meets the needs of its workforce,” said Mr Matusik.
“Great cities should be able to house their workforce, and everything else flows from that key foundation. The Gold Coast is currently falling well short on that metric.”
Matusik’s report is backed by data showing Gold Coast unemployment running at 3.1 per cent against a national average of 4.2 per cent, with the report estimating the city is on track to expand to a workforce of 430,000 by 2032.
While the development industry has moved to keep up with the city’s housing demand, lodging about $25 billion worth of residential building approvals since 2020, close to 19 per cent of Australia’s entire residential approval total over the period, the report argues that the both the pace and the product mix hasn’t been enough to deliver housing at prices the local workforce can meet.
The Matusik report cites the Gold Coast price-to-wage ratio as a critical issue for affordability across the city.
The ration of 13.2 for a detached house on the Gold Coast compares with 11.4 in Sydney and 7.1 nationally, with 50 per cent of wage income going to rent a three-bed house.
Gold Coast households earn an average $181,000 a year, according to the report, but the wages and salaries component of that figure, which Matusik says best reflects what a key worker can actually afford, is just $100,000.
Both measures have risen about 15 per cent since Covid, yet both sit about $15,000 below the Southeast Queensland average.
Against that income, a detached house on the Gold Coast now costs $1.35 million after a 105 per cent increase since Covid, while an attached dwelling costs $980,000, up 106 per cent.
Three-bedroom houses rent for $985 a week and two-bedroom apartments for $855, increases of about 170 per cent in both cases.
“The result is an affordability gap wider than Sydney’s and that exposes the Gold Coast to a major structural issue when it comes to housing its workforce,” said Mr Matusik.
“The clearest evidence of this squeeze is reflected in the city’s journey-to-work data.”
In 2016, about 36,000 workers or 13 per cent of the city’s then 272,000-strong workforce lived outside the Gold Coast – rising to 16 per cent, or 48,000 workers, by 2021.
It now stands at 26 per cent, or 100,000 workers, which is almost triple the actual number of a decade ago.
Matusik estimates the share will hit 35 per cent by 2032, adding a further 50,000 daily commuters to the M1 and its feeder arterials.
“Every worker priced out of the Gold Coast becomes a car on the M1, and no amount of road widening changes that,” says Matusik.
“The congestion problem and the housing problem are the same problem, and only one of them has a fix.”
Population growth, which shows no signs of waning, will keep applying the pressure.
The Gold Coast population is currently about 700,000 residents, up 12 per cent since Covid, making it Australia’s sixth largest urban centre, with forecasts pointing to another 100,000 by 2032.
Overseas migration accounted for 70 per cent of the growth of the past five years, while one in five new residents came from wealthier local government areas elsewhere in Australia.
“The broader concern for the Gold Coast is the effect of these pressures on the city’s industry mix,” said Mr Matusik.
“Future industries are built by talent, not wealth, and talent needs the right salary and conditions to live comfortably. This is becoming increasingly challenging for the Gold Coast.”
Health care, construction, retail, education and tourism account for 65 per cent of Gold Coast jobs, and about 200,000 positions, or one in two, sit in essential key worker service occupations.
Only 60,000 jobs, or one in six, are in what the report classifies as future-facing industries, spanning artificial intelligence and digital technologies, medical research and biotechnology, defence and sovereign technologies, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, cyber security and data centres, financial and fintech services, and education exports.
Artificial intelligence and digital technologies employ 4,500 people locally, or 1.2 per cent of the workforce, while creative and digital industries account for 6,000 jobs.
The report says those industries are built out of talent, ideas, entrepreneurs, connectivity and opportunity, and that the Gold Coast has all of them except attainable housing.
According to Mr Matusik, the critical question for the Gold Coast is how the city delivers residences at around $650,000 to buy and under $600 a week to rent.
Modelling of underlying demand puts the requirement at 9,350 new dwellings a year between 2026 and 2036, spread across seven product types rather than concentrated in detached housing and high-rise apartments.
That breaks down to 1,530 traditional detached houses a year, 1,480 apartments in larger mid and high-rise projects, 1,465 small lot homes on blocks under 200 square metres, 1,360 dwellings in small-scale low-rise infill projects with a strong co-living component, 1,320 ancillary dwellings, rooming accommodation and backyard homes, 1,135 townhouses, terraces and manor homes, and 1,060 dwellings in age-related care.
More than 40 per cent of the requirement sits in the small lot, low-rise infill and ancillary categories that Mr Matusik says current planning settings and development economics deliver least of.
“The measure of success over the next five years will not be the number of dwellings the city approves but the price points they land at and the range of forms they take,” said Mr Matusik.
“Maintaining opportunity means embracing better housing choices, not fewer ones, because going up, as the city has been advocating for so long, only works for some,” he says.
“The greatest threat to the Gold Coast’s economic future is a failing to build attainable homes for the people who make the Gold Coast work.”
