Regional jobs cost significantly more to staff in 2026

Rents have risen 43.9 per cent in five years and regional rents are now climbing faster than those in the capital cities. Very little of that increase has reached the tenders being priced this year, and on a regional job the cost of getting people to site and keeping them there is one of the largest single line items a contractor carries.

The cost of housing a crew has moved

Australian rents have risen 43.9 per cent in five years. The median dwelling costs $204 a week more than it did five years ago. Regional rents are now climbing faster than those in the capital cities, 6.0 per cent against 5.6 per cent in the year to March 2026, on a vacancy rate of 1.9 per cent.

Applied to a crew that is not a rounding error. Thirty people housed four to a dwelling is eight dwellings. At $204 a week each, roughly $1,630 a week, or $85,000 a year, more than the identical arrangement five years ago. Nothing about the job changed. The market did.

Accommodation is only the start of it

Under the Building and Construction General On-site Award, an employee on distant work must be provided with accommodation and three adequate meals a day, or paid a living away from home allowance, whichever is the greater. Where the work is camp based, board and accommodation are provided free of charge.

Travel sits on top. The employer pays the fares to the distant job and home again, and pays travel time at ordinary rates for up to eight hours a day of travel. Where accommodation is off site, the fares and travel pattern allowance covers the daily run between the lodging and the gate. A fly in fly out crew is being paid for hours in which no work is performed, by award, before a single bed is booked.

“What we are seeing is clients with projects and work in regional areas not allocating enough in their tender proposals to cover the higher costs of FIFO and relocation on those jobs. They are often finding their margins get squeezed as a result.”

Rob Clowes, Director, Infrastructure People

And more of the work is out there

Infrastructure Australia’s 2025 Market Capacity Report puts the major public infrastructure pipeline at $242 billion to 2028-29. Of that, $63 billion, or 27 per cent, sits outside the eight capital cities, and ten regions are expected to more than double their pipeline between 2025-26 and 2028-29.

Those projects compete with one another for the same rooms. In the Central-West Orana renewable energy zone the temporary population is forecast to rise by 6,372 people at peak construction from 2027, and Dubbo, Orange and Dunedoo are all expected to run short of beds by 2031.

Where the tender goes wrong

Most of this is knowable. It is rarely known at the point it matters. The accommodation line is usually built from the last job rather than from the town the work is in, and a four year project priced on 2022 costs carries that gap for its whole life. Construction accounted for 3,472 of the 14,152 company insolvencies recorded in 2025-26, more than any other industry.

How we help

The answer is not only sharper estimating. It is changing the mix. Every person hired locally is a bed not rented, a fare not paid and travel time not accrued, and as mobilisation costs rise the value of a local hire rises with them. On a long regional job that difference compounds.

Infrastructure People works with businesses on how they resource regional work. A large part of that is simply understanding what a particular project in a particular town will genuinely cost to staff, and working through it before the number goes in rather than after.

Sources

• Cotality Quarterly Rental Review, five year rental growth, reported by ABC News, 8 October 2025
• Cotality Rental Review Q1 2026, regional rent growth and vacancy
• Fair Work Ombudsman, Living away from home and distant work in the Building and Construction Award
• Fair Work Ombudsman, Travelling and living away from home in the Building and Construction Award
• Infrastructure Australia, 2025 Infrastructure Market Capacity Report
• NSW Department of Planning, Central-West Orana regional major infrastructure study, fact sheet 1
• ASIC insolvency statistics FY2025-26, reported by Accountants Daily, 22 July 2026