Migration is responsible for almost half of regional Australia’s population growth and economic development, a new report says.

Research from the Regional Australia Institute shows migrants made up 46.2 per cent of growth in 2025, with the largest cohort arriving in areas outside the nation’s capital cities being people aged between 25 and 44.

The report comes as regional healthcare services warn of major workforce shortages if the migrant intake is cut.

The institute is calling for increased regional migration pathways to be placed at the centre of the nation’s population planning in a bid to address skills shortages and to support new economic activity.

Regional Australia received just over 17 per cent of overseas migrants in the 2024/25 financial year, well below its 36 per cent share of the national population, the report says.

Under current policy settings, 28 per cent of Australia’s population growth is projected to go to the regions, according to the institute.

But it argues its modelling shows that figure could reach as high as 72 per cent under a “nation-building approach” that prioritises the regions as a primary destination for population growth.

Regional Australia Institute chief executive Liz Ritchie said it was very easy to politicise migrants and blame them for housing shortages and other societal issues.

“What we really need to be doing and what we should be thinking more broadly about is holding our decision makers accountable for not adequately planning,” Ms Ritchie said.

“We’ve had three federal inquiries that have looked at population in this country in the last decade, and all three have recommended that we need a national population and settlement plan, and yet we still don’t have one.”

Ms Ritchie said it was high time Australia re-imagined itself and prioritised regional Australia.

Economist and demographer Dr Ian Pringle said if Australia’s migrant intake were to be cut, it would have a significant impact on regional Australia.

“Regional Australia wouldn’t be able to operate as effectively without an international workforce. They bring skills, new ideas and new ways of thinking,” he said.

“Regional Australia simply doesn’t have the population or the skills available and it relies heavily on migrated staff.”

Another report from consultants Deloitte found that refugees who access settlement services early are almost ten per cent more likely to be employed after three years.

Better English skills, more friendships beyond one’s own ethnic group and a higher likelihood of studying, training for jobs and having a driver’s licence emerged among humanitarian migrants who accessed settlement services early, along with the better employment outcomes.

The report analysed a group of migrants settled through the federal government’s humanitarian and refugee pathway, tracking them over a decade.

The scheme welcomes 20,000 arrivals per year and has taken in more than one million migrants since 1947.

The report found those who engaged support services were $18,000 better off in wages after 10 years, and the ones who graduated tertiary education with settlement services’ help would earn $80,400 more per person over 20 years.

A plan to cut Australia’s refugee intake by one-third, floated in the 2026/27 federal budget, was scrapped by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in August.

Refugees make up a fraction of net overseas migration, which came in at 301,000 in the year to December 2025 and is forecast to dip to 245,000 in the year to June 2027.

One Nation has proposed reducing it further to 130,000. The coalition is yet to nominate a figure, instead saying it would be tied to new houses being completed.