On the day the Melbourne Cup runs 30 minutes after the reserve bank announces its interest rate decision, overseas travel figures are never going to make anyone sit up and take notice.

Even figures implying an accelerating surge in migration.

But, for anyone interested in the Australian economy’s likely path, they are worth a close look.

And, it’s worth looking past the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures’ most-noticed feature: the short-term arrivals and departures numbers that reveal trends in travel and tourism.

These short-term figures, show the trend in outbound passenger movements flattening out which, perhaps, suggests a tired economy being reflected in less demand for overseas holidays.

But the figures, released each month, also count the number of long-term arrivals and departures – Australian and foreigners – moving in or out of the country with the intention of staying for at least 12 of the following 15 months.

For want of a better word, let’s call it migration.

One big problem with the figures is that they are not seasonally adjusted.

So, you have to be careful not to read too much into data showing, for example, a 40 per cent rise in long-term departures from Australia in December because they always rise by about that much in that month.

But, you can work around that by adjusting for the average deviation from the norm over the previous few years and applying the trend calculation used by the ABS in its other monthly data series.

And that rough-and-ready trend estimate shows a net inflow – long-term arrivers minus leavers – running at more than 27,000 a month, or around 330,000 at an annual rate.

A year ago, it was closer to 270,000 a year; 12 months before that it was around 175,000.

So, this measure of net migration flows has nearly doubled.

Migration is by far the main reason population growth fluctuates from year to year and, aside from a period from late 2008 to mid-2009, net migration flows appear to be as strong as they have ever been.

That has implications for housing prices, among other things.

It suggests some upward pressure on housing prices is likely, although the figures from the ABS on Tuesday showed no sign of it.

Established capital-city house prices were up only 0.3 per cent in the September quarter, with annual growth also coming in at 0.3 per cent.

The implied migration flows also have a bearing on the monthly employment data.

Based on the historical relationship between the two, the current rate of long-term travel flows suggests the working-age population measure used as a basis for the bureau’s monthly labour force survey should be growing at about 34,000 a month.

But the most recent labour force figures assume monthly growth of 22,000.

If that too-low assumption is carried forward into the October jobs figures due on Thursday, it would cause monthly employment growth to be underestimated by about 7,000.