Population growth is a major factor for Queenstown Lakes' ranking as a high performer in an annual economic survey of New Zealand's 66 regional authorities.
In their regional rankings for 2011, Business and Economic Research Ltd (Berl) placed Queenstown in second position, below Buller and above Waimakariri, Selwyn and the Waikato.
Berl senior economist Jason Leung-Wai said sources such as business demography statistics, census population statistics and the household labour-force survey were used.
"It's basically a review of employment growth, population growth, GDP and business growth of that area and looks at the structure of that employment."
He said Queenstown's strengths were continuous population growth and continuous business growth, which the economic survey indicated was missing in the lower performing regions.
"Of the five bottom performers, all were based around the central North Island.
"They were all rural-based, with small, declining populations," the survey said.
Queenstown was overtaken by Selwyn in business growth but Mr Leung-Wai said it was only due to a move out of Christchurch and into Selwyn.
"You [Queenstown] did not grow any slower; it's just because Selwyn grew faster."
A summary of Queenstown Lakes in the survey said the region had been in the top five for the past five years but had been "hurt" by the recession, and subsequently ranked 31 for employment and 56 for GDP.
"Despite this, longer-term growth in both of these indicators has kept Queenstown Lakes in the top two," the survey said.
The survey did not take council debt into consideration since it was not considered a key factor in determining growth, Mr Leung-Wai said.
"Councils can't be fully responsible for employment growth."
He said regions with low population growth but high productive activity were accounted for through the "relative openness index" indicator, which prevented a bias towards cities.
For this survey, methodology had been adjusted to include short- and medium-term indicators, which the report said had resulted in more consistency and encouraged a longer-term focus on development and investment.
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