2902.0 - Census Update (Newsletter), Apr 1998  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 30/04/1998   
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Census Characteristics Publications


        Did you know?
      • 33 Urban Centres in Australia had median weekly household income of $1,000 or more and
      • 7 of the 10 Urban Centres with the greatest population growth since 1991 were in Queensland.

Two new sets of publications from the 1996 Census are now available and provide key findings about Australian communities.

The Selected Characteristics for Urban Centres and Localities series provides selected social, housing and labour force data for Urban Centres and Localities. An Urban Centre is a population cluster of 1,000 or more people and a Locality (or rural area) ranges between 200 and 999 people.

Some comparisons are also provided between urban and rural areas at the State/ Territory level. Publications are available for each State and Territory with the exception of the ACT which is included in the NSW publication.

A sample of some of the interesting findings contained in these publications follow;
  • in 1996, there were four cities with more than one million people: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth
  • Foster (Victoria) and Milton (NSW) had the greatest percentages of females - 55.7% and 55.6% respectively
  • places with very high proportions of people aged 65 years or more were overwhelmingly along the NSW and Queensland coastline, for instance Iluka (36.7%), Camden Haven (36.4%) and Harrington (34.2%).

    Family and Labour Force Facts

    Is there a higher proportion of people living on their own?


    Is the number of lone parent families increasing?


    What is the average household size in NSW?


    How many people are employed full-time in Victoria?


    What percentage of workers are part-timers in the Kimberley area of WA?
        The answers to all of these questions and much more can be found in Selected Family and Labour Force Characteristics for Statistical Local Areas. This series contains family, labour force and other selected data from the 1991 and 1996 Censuses. Separate publications are available for each State and Territory, as well as a national issue.

        This series complements the Selected Social and Housing Characteristics for SLAs. The two series combined give an overall picture of the characteristics in Statistical Local Areas.*

        In the ACT, 21% of households were lone person households and some 14% of families in Victoria were lone parent families. Additionally, couples with dependent children in Queensland comprised 40% of all families.

        * When comparing information from the first release series (Selected Social and Housing Characteristics for SLA cat. no 2015.0-8.) with these two newly released publications, users should be aware that the 2105.0-8 series included overseas visitors in all of the 1991 data, but only male, female and total person counts for 1996. This is different to the 2017 series of publications which only includes overseas visitors in age and sex counts in 1991 and 1996 data.