Second release Census data is out!

Census data in Australia usually comes in two parts – first release, the “easy” questions to process comes out about 10 months after Census date (in this case in June 2012), while second release is a few months later. On October 30th, the ABS launched the second release of the Australian Census data from the 2011 count.

Overview of second release data

This dataset includes information on:

• Employment status
• Industry
• Occupation
• Method of travel to work
• Post-school qualifications
• Migration within Australia
• Work destination

 Interesting findings

Some of the key characteristics revealed by the 2011 Census second release are as follows:

• For the first time since 1986-1991, the 2006-2011 Censuses reveals an increase in unemployment over 5 years. The unemployment rate went from 5.2% to 5.6%, with increases particularly marked in Queensland (4.7% to 6.1%), and (surprisingly) Western Australia (3.8% to 4.7%). Tasmania’s unemployment rate actually went down, while Vic and NSW were steady.
• More than half the increase in unemployment was from people looking for PART-TIME work. The number of people employed part-time increased by 14% over 5 years, compared to 9% for those employed full-time.
• The participation rate also increased, however, which means that a higher proportion of the population is employed or looking for work. It went up from 60.4% to 61.4% (note that this figure is lower than that coming out of the labour force survey due to the number of Census respondents who don’t state their labour force status).
• There was a large increase in the proportion of the population with Bachelor Degrees or higher, up from 15.6% in 2006 to 18.8% in 2011. The increase in the proportion with postgraduate qualifications was more marked, up from 4.0% to 5.3% of the population aged 15+. Now almost a million Australians have a post-graduate qualification (certificate, diploma, masters or pHD).
•  The much talked about mining boom still only directly employed 1.8% of Australia’s workforce (6.2% in Western Australia), but it did increase by almost 70,000 people between 2006 and 2011, the largest percentage increase of any industry Australia-wide (65.2% up on 2006 employment). Other large increases were Construction (+29.2%), and Health care & social assistance (+22.1%), while Agriculture (=11.1%) and Manufacturing (-5.2%) continued to slide.

When will profile.id be updated?

At .id we are working as fast as we can to get the second release data set into our Local Government clients’ profile.id sites. This takes a bit of time, because we don’t present it for ABS standard geographic areas, but for areas agreed to with our clients, that represent logical communities of interest – and we have to make sure that we’ve got the data sets consistent back to 1991 where available. This is a big job, and we currently anticipate having all this data online by the end of November 2012. If you are a current client and really need to access some data before this, please contact us as we may be able to provide a special data set in advance of our release.

Thanks for your patience.

Access more information about the Australian Census 2011.

Access the new profile.id sites and other population statistics for Australia, States, Capital Cities, Local Government Areas and suburbs at .id’s demographic resource centre.