The Premier is blaming a rush of jobseekers to the Sunshine State for dole queues remaining stubbornly long despite billions of dollars of investment in the mining and gas boom.

But figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Government's own Office of Economic and Statistic Research do not back up her claim - with interstate migration at its lowest level in three decades.

ABS figures put the unemployment rate at 5.8 per cent in December, with 144,000 Queenslanders out of work. Only Tasmania, at 6 per cent, is worse.

Ms Bligh described Queensland as the "jobs-generating capital of Australia", pointing out 3600 of the 4200 jobs created nationwide during November were here. 

It is the same reason her predecessor Peter Beattie was using nearly a decade ago - when the numbers moving to Queensland from other parts of Australia were at record levels.

Net interstate migration to the Sunshine State peaked in 2002 at 37,400 people - 719 more people arriving here each week than leaving.

But that stampede across the border is now a dawdle. The latest available ABS data, for the year to the end of June 2011, shows that while net interstate migration to Queensland was still higher than other states, it fell to 7200 - only 138 people a week.

That was 25 per cent down on the previous year - and the lowest level since the early 1980s.

More than two-thirds of the interstate migrants came from NSW, but Queensland is coming off second best in the battle for workers to resource-boom rival Western Australia, with a net loss of 1127 people to that state.