The federal government's State of Australian Cities report, published on Wednesday, showed Canberra's population growth rate more than doubled in the five years to 2011 and men under the age of 24 were the largest group of new residents.

More than four out of five people who moved to Canberra in that period were men.

Australian National University development studies student Megan Barker, 20, was in Civic to watch a movie with friends Sheridan McElligott and Bethany Flanagan on Thursday night.

Ms Barker, of Fadden, is recently single after the end of a long term relationship. "From what my friends who have been single for a while say, there's plenty of single guys out there but not necessarily single guys you'd want to do anything with," she laughed.

"We mainly see guys from around the ANU, and a lot of them can be rather immature and cocky."

Ms Flanagan, of O'Connor, also a student at the ANU, said she had noticed a lot of large groups of young men on nights out in the city.

"Especially when you're out in Civic there always seems like a huge number of guys compared to girls, but I guess I've always assumed that's just guys go out drinking more and sometimes looking for that more," she said. But Ms Flanagan was willing to defend male ANU students - she has begun dating a science student.

"My experience having recently got into a relationship with an import to Canberra [is that] some of them are really good," she said.

A spokesman for the Department of Infrastructure and Transport,which published the report, said he could not offer any specific reasons for the trend but commented: "Males usually have a higher propensity to migrate than females at all age groups but there are places and times, such as regional Australia in the '70s, '80s and '90s, which lost females at a far higher rate than males."