In the realm of the census, let’s follow the money
Changes in income distribution and pandemic factors have created some dramatic changes since 2016.
Come with me on a journey to each city, suburb and town on the Australian continent in a series dedicated to slicing, dicing and dissecting the 2021 census, in which I will examine the demography of the Australian people by age, gender, geography, work habits and even commuting patterns.
We are a small nation scattered across a vast continent; census insight is important to understand where to invest collective and individual resources. Toss in changed behaviours in response to the pandemic, and you have all the reason needed to better understand the Australian people.
Plus, there is a general feeling of change. The transitioning of the baby boomers, the rise of the millennials, new ways of working, labour shortages, shifts in belief; who volunteers, who does housework, who cares for family members; there is no shortage of topics and issues that will shape post-pandemic Australia.
The Australian census of 2021 asked more than 60 questions, each of which can be interrogated by age, gender, geography and cross-tabulated. As far as my world of demography goes, it doesn’t get any better. And the Australian Bureau of Statistics will release even more data later this year.
So, lots to look forward to, but where to start?
In some ways, the single most important question asked by the census relates to income. It drives behaviour; it varies by state, by community. Is it rising, is it falling? Income goes a long way towards determining our quality of life.
Together with data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kannan, I have accessed median personal weekly income figures for 2400 communities (known as SA2s) comprising Australia, then matched these with the same figures for 2016, and built a database showing the rise and, yes, fall, in median income levels at a granular level across Australia over the past five years.
All this prompts a simple question. How has my community fared in the income stakes?
Let’s answer this question by starting at the state level.
Victoria outpaces other states
The median personal income across Australia increased by 22 per cent between 2016 and 2021, which is more than double the rate of inflation that applied at this time.
In the state of Victoria, my state, where the lockdowns were most severe over the 16 months leading up to the 2021 census in August, there was a 25 per cent increase in median personal income over the 2016 figure.
Victoria outperformed all states on this measure. Maybe tough times created in the Victorians a steely determination to adapt and succeed.
The poorest performance of any state or territory was the Northern Territory where the five-year uplift in median personal income to 2021 was just 7 per cent. However, this growth this was off a particularly high base in 2016.
The census shows that Top End income growth is slowing; it is converging with the median for Western Australia.
The Top End is now less of an outlier than it was previously. Maybe it’s time for the Territory to reconsider the issue of statehood?
Rich not necessarily getting richer
The highest and lowest median income suburbs in each state tell another story. Based on this measure of income, the census demonstrates that it isn’t true that the rich are getting richer.
Over the five years to 2021, the median personal income in east Melbourne, the highest income community in Victoria, increased by 14 per cent.
However, in Campbellfield-Coolaroo (home to Darryl Kerrigan) the increase was 16 per cent. Darryl is closing the gap ever so slightly on Melbourne’s elite.
In Canberra, too, the richest suburb lost ground relative to the poorest suburb over the five years to 2021. For example, median income in Forrest was up 14 per cent over these years whereas for low-income Acton (which includes ANU students) the jump was 44 per cent.
And in Western Australia, the state’s second highest income community, Port Hedland, jumped 14 per cent over the five years to 2021 whereas in struggling Roebuck (which includes Broome) the increase was 29 per cent.
Median personal income figures aren’t wholly shaped by economic forces; they are also impacted by demographic change like low-paid workers choosing to relocate to perhaps take up a better job offer.
Of the 24 lowest median income communities spread across all states and territories, most have recorded some income growth since 2016.
Indeed, income growth exceeded the national average in four such places: Aurukun, up 27 per cent; Canberra East, up 25 per cent; Roebuck, up 29 per cent; and Acton up 44 per cent.
However, of real concern is the census finding that two of the poorest communities in Australia as measured by median personal income, Thamarrurr and Tiwi Islands, both in the Top End, experienced income falls of between 3 per cent and 18 per cent off already low-income bases over the five years to 2021.
Hopefully, this census perspective will help attract the support that these communities need.
Mining a rich vein
The community with the highest median personal income in Australia is the Ashburton SA2 in the Pilbara which includes the mining towns of Tom Price and Paraburdoo, among others.
Here the median personal income in 2021 was $1865 per week or almost $97,000 per year. And this was achieved despite a 22 per cent drop in income from 2016.
Step aside Toorak. Move over Point Piper. Perth’s Dalkeith, you were never in the race. Australia’s ritziest neighbourhood isn’t located in some swanky capital city suburb. It’s the FIFO accommodation camps of the Pilbara.
Indeed, the census shows that the median personal income level in Ashburton tops those reported in Point Piper by 10 per cent. Maybe luxury brands should consider opening stores in Paraburdoo?
Googong gangbusters
The town and region centred on Googong, 10km south of Queanbeyan, offers Canberrans access to a treechange lifestyle within easy reach of the national capital.
Many of Australia’s highest median-income communities are located within, or are connected to, Canberra.
For example, Forrest located on the western slopes of Capital Hill reported a median personal income at the census of $1816 per week. This places Forrest ahead of Sydney’s Double Bay in terms of income levels.
Many other Canberra suburbs also report high median weekly income figures, such as Kingston ($1777) and Barton ($1775). The public sector typically employs knowledge workers whose income levels tend to sit at the upper end of the Australian salary scale.
And so Googong has quite naturally evolved as a rural retreat for Canberra workers.
However, toss in a pandemic and a mandate to work from home, and public sector (and other) workers fled the cities to escape Covid.
As a consequence, the median personal weekly income of Googong residents has increased from $1076 in 2016 to $1629 in 2021, an increase of 51 per cent. This hike was greater than any increase in any other of Australia’s 40 richest communities. Put simply, Googong has gone gangbusters.
The story of Googong’s sudden surge in median income has probably been replicated outside other major cities in Australia.
The question is whether these Googong VESPAs (virus escapees seeking provincial Australia) will return to Canberra post pandemic. Or, has the deep-seated Australian penchant for lifestyle permanently changed how and where workplace value is delivered?
Mapping the middle
The ABS divides the Australian continent into 2400 suburbs or communities called SA2s. Last Tuesday’s release of the 2021 census data provides a single median personal weekly income figure for each SA2.
We have sorted, colour-coded and mapped all SA2s and grouped the lot into three categories: the top 25 per cent, the bottom 25 per cent, and the remaining 50 per cent – or middle Australia.
The aim is to show the geographic extent of middle Australia and its connection with high-and low-income communities.
What emerges at an Australia-wide perspective is the contrast between mining communities and Indigenous communities. Low-income seachange zones thread along the coast. However, the broad interior is dominated by this particular definition of middle Australia.
A remarkably similar pattern emerges within our capital cities. Middle Australia spreads and spills throughout suburbia, a bit like mortar, between the high-income and low-income zones that comprise metropolitan Australia.
Indeed, it could be said that middle Australia acts like a social glue connecting, or at least enveloping, the high-income and low-income zones.
This is best illustrated in Sydney and Melbourne where low-income enclaves appear to have been flung out, as if propelled by some centrifugal force, to outer suburbia.
The pattern in Canberra and Darwin is quite different. There is no expansive middle Australia (as defined) in Canberra and only some scattered low-income communities.
In Darwin, there are high- and low-income earners. Or so it would seem based on the latest census data.
In Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart middle-income earners form a kind of background social wallpaper.
The well-to-do of the Adelaide Hills are well separated from the struggling communities in Adelaide’s north.
Perth and Brisbane’s high-income earners dominate the two cities’ respective river frontages that lie within easy access of the city centre.
Perhaps this is the social geography that evolves with a market economy: the rich commandeer the most desirable real estate.
Big questions remain
But surely this is at odds with current thinking where diversity is all the go.
We see considerable value in encouraging and supporting workers from diverse backgrounds in workplaces.
Would our cities work better, and would our communities be strengthened, if our social demography were more jumbled together: high-, medium- and low-income earners all provided with some level of access to the amenity of the inner and even inner-middle suburbs?
Sometimes the census throws up some big questions about the future as well as generating unique present perspectives on who we are as a nation.
The other point that emerges from this data is the broad increase in income (from all sources) for many communities across Australia since the last census. We are indeed a land of opportunity.
Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group; research, data and graphics by Hari Hara Priya Kannan.
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