Wagga has added thousands of jobs over the past five years, mainly through new residents in the city's north far exceeding job losses in other suburbs.
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A jobs market report has revealed varied growth and some losses from town to town in the Riverina.
Mayors and business groups have credited access to major highways and large employers as some of the factors behind the varied outcomes.
The best-performing area in the region was the northern suburbs of Wagga, which saw a 43 per cent jump in people with jobs between 2012 and 2017.
Other areas of the city had growth below the NSW average of 9 per cent or small declines, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 'Jobs in Australia' report.
Towns such as Junee and Gundagai saw up to 6 per cent jobs growth but others such as Tumut, Tumbarumba, Cootamundra and Temora saw declines or flat job levels over five years.
NSW Business Chamber Murray-Riverina regional manager Andrew Cottrill said the Riverina's overall jobs figures were good but the economy faced challenges from the bushfires and the coronavirus.
"More people are being employed, in general, across Wagga but a lot of them are moving into new estates where they are residing in a different part of Wagga and therefore skew the statistics to show large jobs growth in north Wagga," he said.
"Typically for a large regional city, people don't necessarily try to live where they work; it's very much live where you choose to and work where you can."
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Mr Cottrill said the Riverina towns that performed the best in terms of jobs had large industries or single employers to support growth.
"I think when you see a regional centre lifting as dramatically as Junee, it relates to a large project and I believe there is an expansion to the prison at the moment which will certainly increase employment," he said.
"In the bushfire areas we will probably see a spike in jobs there when they are trying to harvest all the burnt timber in the next year.
"There may well be a decline following that given they will have to go through that long regrowth cycle to get mature timber."
Cootamundra and Gundagai mayor Abb McAlister said highway services and changes in the meat industry were some of the reasons for varying jobs growth across his council area.
"The closure of the abattoirs [at Cootamundra] probably put more than 200 people out of work," he said.
"The good news is that it has been sold and hopefully within 12 months it will be open again.
"At Gundagai for the young people to work, being on the [Hume] Highway, there's a lot of fast food outlets."