What the State of the City Report Means for Your Business
If you haven't had a chance to read the Brisbane Economic Development Agency's State of the City 2025 report, we'd encourage you to put it on your list.
It's a genuinely useful document - and for northside business owners, there's a lot in it worth knowing about.
The headline is hard to argue with. Brisbane now contributes $201 billion to the Australian economy, is growing faster than any other major capital city, and is sitting at the centre of a $100.6 billion infrastructure pipeline that spans construction, transport, health, commercial development, and more. The city that once felt like a well-kept secret is very much on the global radar - and that has real implications for local businesses.
Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner sums it up well in the report's foreword: "With the global spotlight on our city in the lead-up to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, there's never been a more exciting time to help shape our future."
What the report does particularly well is move beyond the big numbers to show where the real opportunities sit. Across six key sectors - health, construction, transport and logistics, advanced manufacturing, the knowledge economy, and the experience economy - it maps out the current strengths, the growth forecasts, and the specific areas where businesses can get involved.
For many of our members, the most relevant sections will be around the building economy (strong demand, a tight commercial property market, and significant government-backed housing incentives), the experience economy (Brisbane's hospitality sector has grown nearly 30% since 2020, leading every other Australian capital), and the knowledge economy (professional services exports from Queensland have grown 66% in five years - nearly double the national average).
There's also a compelling case made for why Brisbane's cost advantages still hold. Office rents at the time of publishing were 50% lower than Sydney, payroll tax is the lowest of any Australian state, and freight costs are more competitive than any other east coast capital. For businesses thinking about growth, these conditions matter.
We're sharing this report because we think it's the kind of context that helps you make better decisions - whether that's about where to invest, how to position your business for the pipeline of work ahead, or simply understanding the environment we're all operating in.