The early data from the latest census, released by the ABS today highlights the momentum in population growth across the nation.
The 2016 Census counted 23,717,421 people in Australia on Census night, which included 23,401,892 people who usually live in Australia– an 8.8 per cent increase from 2011. On Census night, over 600,000 Australians were travelling overseas.
In the last 10 years the population has been growing by 1.7% each year, compared with 1.4% in the prior decade.
1.3 million new migrants have come to call Australia home since 2011, hailing from some of the 180 countries of birth recorded in the Census, with China (191,000) and India (163,000) being the most common countries of birth of our new arrivals.
Strong migration, plus births, and people living to a great age are all putting upward pressure on the numbers. This momentum is expected to continue putting more pressure on infrastructure and creating more congestion especially in our major urban centres.
The Census found that New South Wales remains our most populous state, with 7,480,228 people counted, ahead of Victoria in second (5,926,624 people) and Queensland in third (4,703,193 people).
Yet it’s the home of the nation’s capital – the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) – that experienced the largest population growth of any state or territory over the past five years, adding more than 40,000 new residents – an increase of 11 per cent.
Located approximately 45 kilometres from the Perth CBD in the woody hills of the Darling Scarp, Serpentine – Jarrahdale showed the fastest regional growth in the country, with a population increase of 51 per cent to 27,000 people – up from 18,000 people in 2011. Gungahlin, a thriving northern area in the ACT, continues to flourish and is now home to 71,000 people, up from 47,000 in 2011 – an increase of 50 per cent.
Stretching from the beaches of Bondi and Manly to the Blue Mountains, Greater Sydney once again came in as Australia’s largest population centre, with 4,823,991 people, with around 1,656 new people calling the Harbour City home every week since the last Census. However, the cultural hub of Greater Melbourne is closing in fast with 4,485,211 people, increasing by around 1,859 people every week since 2011.
The average age – the median – has moved up from 36 years to 38 and there are more people over the age of 65 years, with an increase from 14% to 16% of the population. The 2016 Census found that there are 664,473 additional people aged 65 and over since 2011. The demographic shift here is significant in terms of healthcare, aged care and wealth management.
Median weekly household incomes rose from $1,234 in 2011 to $1,438 in 2016. The average individual income was $577, and is now $662.
The dwellings data is interesting, in that we see a 6.8% rise in the number of occupied dwellings between 2011 and 2016, from 7.7 million to 8.3 million. The average monthly mortgage repayment is $1,755 today, compared with $1,800 in 2011, whilst rents have risen by 17.5%, from a weekly $285 to $335. There was little change in the mix between families, single persons and group households. There was no change to the average number of people in each dwelling, at 2.6 and the average number of bedrooms remained at 3.1.
More households are renting, up from the previous census in 2011, from 27% in 2011 to 31% in 2016. Clearly the rise in property values relative to income and poor housing affordability (refer population growth above) makes it more difficult to enter the market, to say nothing of the greater penetration of property investors. We also see that apartments, flats and townhouses have increased as a share of all housing dwellings from 24% to 27% over the past decade.
The cultural mix in the country is changing, look back half a century and around 18% of Australians were born overseas. The latest data shows this now stands at 26%.
The ethic mix has also changed. Back in 1966 one third of these people were born in England but today this is 15%. The proportion from New Zealand also decreased over the same period from 9.1% to 8.4%.
In contrast, the proportion of overseas-born Australians born in China has jumped from 6% to 8.3% and from India from 5.6% to 7.4%.
Finally, a greater proportion of the population has no specific religious affiliation. The proportion of people reporting no religion increased to 30 per cent in 2016 – up from 22 per cent five years ago and nearly double the 16 per cent in 2001.
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