The Gold Coast Professional Economy: More Than Tourism

The Gold Coast's economic profile has diversified substantially from the tourism and construction dependence that characterised the city in its earlier decades, with the growth of financial services, healthcare, education, and the technology sector providing the employment base that a city of 700,000 people requires beyond the visitor economy's seasonal and cyclical demand. The diversification has been driven partly by the deliberate economic development strategy of Councils and the state government, and partly by the natural evolution of a major city whose population creates the service sector demand that professional employment satisfies.

The financial planning and wealth management sector, drawn to the Gold Coast by the substantial retirement and investment wealth of the coast's older demographic and the lifestyle appeal to the financial professionals who could practise anywhere, has created a concentration of financial services businesses that is unusual for a city of the Gold Coast's profile. The combination of the high-net-worth resident population and the interstate clients who engage Gold Coast-based advisers creates a financial services market that supports a professional community of scale.

Griffith University's Gold Coast campus, operating on the Southport health precinct adjacent to the Gold Coast University Hospital, provides the higher education anchor that gives the city's professional economy its graduate supply. The university's health, business, and technology programs, combined with the clinical placement opportunities that the University Hospital provides, create the education infrastructure that sustains the professional workforce that a major regional economy requires.

The Gold Coast University Hospital, opened in 2013 as the largest public hospital building in Queensland's history, provides the healthcare infrastructure that a city of the Gold Coast's size and demographic profile requires and that the previous reliance on the smaller Robina and Pindara hospitals could not sustain as the population grew. The hospital's role as a teaching facility, supporting Griffith University's medical and health programs, creates the academic medical centre that the Gold Coast's health economy required to compete with the medical services that Brisbane provides for the southeast Queensland catchment.

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