Mining investment is relatively intensive in its use of labour. Putting the mining infrastructure in place drew upon workers with a range of construction and engineering skills. It also employed people with skills that we wouldn’t normally associate with mining, in industries such as business services, transport and manufacturing.
Many of those people didn’t work on site, but were based in other parts of the state (and in some cases, beyond that).2 Whether or not they were on- or off-site, people were well rewarded for their work on mining-related projects. In response to those opportunities, there was a large rise in population growth in the mining states.