Live: The ABS helps us unpack the main Census insights (plus the stats that surprised them) — join the conversation

You and me both, Helen.

The second Census data release includes stats on occupation, industry of employment, hours worked, journey to work and non-school qualifications, alongside some insights into where people have moved within Australia.

But some of the first round of data released in June had some interesting stats on age:

• In 2001, 22 per cent of people were born in 1945 or before. Twenty years later, that’s 8 per cent
  
  
• Millennials and baby boomers are now basically the equal-largest generations
  
  

If you’re looking for more information, I’d recommend giving this piece from the ABC’s Story Lab team a read — they’ve taken a look at Australia as 100 people.

You heard that right.

While the number of people working 40 hours or more each week has dropped from 45 per cent a decade ago to 38 per cent in 2021, there are some sectors bucking the trend.

Dr David Gruen: Interestingly, school principals worked as many hours as surgeons, with each recording a median of 50 hours work in a week.

This census counted 7,600 ‘super Australians’ who were working, studying, caring for others doing more than 15 hours of domestic work and volunteering.”

Some of the other industries with the highest median hours worked per week in 2021 include:

• Mixed crop and livestock farmers (50 hours)
• Drillers, miners and shot firers (50 hours)
• Chief executives and managing directors (50 hours)

For Duncan Young, it’s the increase in the number of people with IT qualifications.

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Duncan: So nearly half a million people who are qualified, that’s basically the full population of Tasmania.

That’s like a 36 per cent increase since last Census and so when Australia’s population only went up by a bit over 8 per cent, to get 36 per cent in one qualification is huge.

So, why the increase? Well, the Census doesn’t actually ask people why they chose a certain industry, but according to Duncan, it’s not just that there’s more people qualified in IT — there’s more jobs too.

Duncan: And so it follows that if there’s employment then people will study in those areas, but we also see a big link to migration.

When we look at, say, software application programmers, some two-thirds of people working in those jobs were born overseas.

So a significant number of people coming into Australia with great skills in this space.

Duncan Young is the general manager for the ABS’s Census Division — and to say he likes math might be a bit of an understatement.

He’s worked on Censuses in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar and was part of the UN Statistics Division expert panel for the 2020 round of Censuses.

Duncan: I’m a bit of a Census tragic — I don’t get invited to barbecues anymore.

Throughout this morning, Duncan is going to break down some of those key insights and numbers from today’s data release for us, and he’ll be back again just after 12:00pm AEDT to take your questions!

Duncan: A lot of people start with a viewpoint that numbers aren’t that interesting. But when they can relate it to things in their real life, I’ve been surprised at how interested people can get in it.

Do you have a question or comment about the Census? Hit the big blue button at the top of the page.

We’ll have a further breakdown of some of these employment figures when the full data is released at 10:30am AEST/11:30am AEDT.

The Census data has revealed that 38 per cent of Aussies worked 40 hours or more, down from 45 per cent a decade ago.

“Of those working 40 hours or more, nearly all (86 per cent) did fewer than 15 hours of domestic work. However, a third (35 per cent) had childcare responsibilities and 11 per cent provided unpaid assistance to a person with a disability, health condition or due to old age,” Dr Gruen says.

The Northern Territory and Western Australia had the highest proportion of people working 40 plus hours a week, at 44 per cent and 42 per cent.

Tasmania recorded the lowest proportion at 33 per cent.

In fact, there are almost half a million (470,318) people with an IT qualification — a 36 per cent increase since 2016.

Are you one of them?

• Security science is the fastest growing qualification, up 460 per cent since 2016 with 5,805 people 
• Qualifications in Artificial Intelligence also increased to 630 people (up 200 per cent since 2016)

“The 2021 Census data released today about qualifications and occupations reflects the rising prominance of the digital economy in Australia,” Dr Gruen says.

“There are over 260,000 ICT Professionals and 74,000 ICT Managers in the workforce, an additional 86,000 since the last Census.”

I reckon give it a go and report back with results.

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But you’re not alone, Natty (at least in terms of working from home — maybe less so on your choice of work attire…).

• According to the data, of the 3,684,158 people employed in New South Wales on Census day, there were 1,141,467 working from home
• In Victoria, 814,082 of the 3,162,893 people employed across the state were WFH
• Queensland had the third-highest number of people away from the office, with 344,698 of 2,444,090 employed people working from home

There were over 260,000 Registered Nurses counted in the 2021 Census — and hello if you’re one of them reading this!

The occupation grew by 19 per cent between 2016 and 2021, compared to 13 per cent across the broader workforce.

• Between 2016 and 2021, an extra 96,000 people got a nursing qualification
• Nursing has overtaken building as the third most common non-school qualification in Australia, behind business and management and teacher education

While women make up the majority of those employed as RNs (88 per cent) and Aged and Disabled Carers (77 per cent), the share of males working in these roles has increased a little since 2016.

• In 2021, 12 per cent of RNs were men, compared with 11 per cent in 2016
• For Aged and Disabled Carers, the percentage of males increased to 23 per cent from 20 per cent

 They include health care, retail, construction and education.

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The ABS has put together a quick snapshot of some of the main insights from the Census data:

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing have the oldest workforce — almost 30 per cent are aged 60 years or over, compared to 11 per cent across all industries
• Young people are serving it up — fast food cooks had a median age of 18, followed by 21 for cafe workers
• The top occupations remain the same — sales assistants, registered nurses and general clerks are the top three occupations in Australia, as they were in 2011 and 2016
• Female teachers are head of the class — the majority of early childhood teachers (98 per cent), primary school teachers (85 per cent) and secondary school teachers (62 per cent) are female
• Construction slowly builds diversity — women accounted for about 10 per cent of construction managers in 2021, while the number of women with qualifications in Building Construction Management has doubled since 2016
• New technology, new jobs — software and application programmer now appears in the top 20 occupations in Australia, and security science is the fastest growing field of study
• More than half of Australians now have a qualification — over 11 million people in Australia have a vocational or tertiary qualification
• Migration is translating to work and study increases — qualifications in Southern Asian Languages more than doubled since 2016, becoming the third fastest growing field of study
• Overseas born Australians are more qualified — those born overseas were more likely to have a non-school qualification (63 per cent) than those born in Australia (56 per cent)
• Students get down to business — the most common fields of study are business, teaching, nursing and building
• What do volunteers do when they’re not volunteering? — turns out the professions most likely to volunteers were Minister of Religion, Legislators and Mixed Crop and Livestock Farmers

If you work in the travel sector, or were one of the countless Aussies who had to pull the pin on holiday plans when the pandemic hit, this next figure will probably come as little surprise:

The number of people employed as tourism and travel advisors more than halved since the last Census.

In contrast, the number of delivery drivers increased by more than 70 per cent during the same period.

With pandemic restrictions impacting how many hours people could work, there were some marked changes in the numbers:

• Almost 7 per cent (787,000) of employed people worked zero hours in the week before Census, compared to three per cent in 2016
• 15 per cent of people employed in the construction industry in NSW worked zero hours, compared to just 3 per cent of construction workers nationally
• 23 per cent of those in NSW’s arts and recreation services industry worked zero hours, compared to 20 per cent in Queensland, 14 per cent in Victoria and 5 per cent across the rest of the country

“The 2021 Census will provide enduring value to researchers and policy makers by revealing how the COVID-19 pandemic changed life in Australia,” Dr Gruen says.

Were you one of them?

According to the 2021 Census, of the 12 million people employed on Census day, more than 20 per cent — or some 2.5 million — were working from home.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people on the east coast were more likely to WFH — in NSW that figure was more than 30 per cent, compared to just 4 per cent in the NT.

• People employed in Internet Publishing and Broadcasting had the highest proportion of people working from home (72 per cent), compared to less than 5 per cent of hospital employees
• One in four employed people living in capital cities were WFH, compared with one in eight outside those cities

“The 2021 Census data released today provides fascinating insights into the working life of Australians during the pandemic,” Australian Statistician Dr David Gruen AO says.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of today’s Census data release.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics will release the second round of its 2021 insights at 10:30am AEST/11:30am AEDT — and we’re here to help you unpack what it all means.

Throughout this morning, we’ll be joined by Duncan Young, the general manager for the ABS’s Census Division.

He’s a self-confessed “Census tragic” on a mission to show you that stats can be fun.

Duncan: I don’t get invited to barbecues anymore.

He’ll run us through some of the key numbers and takeaways, before coming right back at 12:00pm AEDT to answer your questions about the Census.

Let’s get into it!