.id insight May 2013

.id community monthly newsletter

May 2013

In This Issue

Australia's most typical suburb

Census matters - Inner City Apartments

Employment Figures

Spotlight on NZ

Inside.id

Population trends in 2012

Tips and tricks - ATSI profile

Population of "the Air"

Quick Link

Greetings!

I'm told that the EOFY is nigh. Uh? A few years ago I had no idea what 'EOFY' stood for and I still struggle a bit with the concept.

The 'End of Financial Year' is a construct that meets our financial accounting needs, including making the remaining expenditures to meet this year's objectives as well as for planning and reviewing priorities for the next year.

It's a discipline imposed on us that is not necessarily relevant to much else in the real world except finances. In my time in both the public and private sector, budgets have almost always been tight and getting tighter - no matter how the economy or the particular organization is performing.

Being in the information business however is an interesting experience at budget time. This is because expenditure on data, information and knowledge are increasingly moved from a discretionary or an almost 'like-to-have' spend for organizations, into the realm of 'need-to-have'.

For example, if you are cutting and tightening budgets (and there is nobody that isn't that I've ever talked to) then you need the evidence base upon which to make and justify those decisions. A wise local government CEO recently claimed, "Cutting 'information' budgets is cutting at the wrong end!"

In fact having a strong evidence base on which informed budget decisions can be made and on which the business case for, dare I say, extending a budget program can be made can be 'gold' in times of constraint.

For example, why would you cut preschool services expenditures when 0-4 year olds are on the increase in your community?

Alternatively you may find the need to move funds from pre-schoolers into aged care and retirement services as the baby boomers in your area enter their 70s in large numbers.

Good luck to those planners and service providers working in communities in which both phenomena are happening!

Take a look at our EOFY price list for the full suite of .id products.

Anyway, happy EOFY and all the best for planning for the next one.... At .id we use the EOFY as an excuse for a boozy lunch - any excuse will do.

Best wishes,

ivan-motley-id

Ivan

Local focus

What's the most typical Australian suburb?

Recently, we published an article on what would constitute Australia's most typical town.

While there are many ways you could define this, we used 6 parameters and picked the one that varied the least from the Australian average to identify Australia's most typical town.

But most people live in metropolitan areas - so what's Australia's most typical suburb within the state and territory capitals?

read more..

Census matters

Are empty nesters moving to inner city apartments? - update

A couple of years ago, (before the 2011 Census data was released) we published an article about inner city high density housing, and the idea that empty nesters were moving in there.

The article concluded that while there were a few empty nesters downsizing into inner city tower blocks, but overwhelmingly these areas were occupied by the young, with no strong trend of over 65s moving into high density.

But what about now?

Based on our analysis of the 2011 Census data, is this trend continuing?

What's up with the economy?

What is the single most important indicator of successful economic development?

I think many would say growth in the number of locally available jobs.

Accurately measuring the number of jobs and job creation is therefore critical in measuring success.

But did you know that the job figures available from the Census undercount employment by as much as 20 percent?

And Census job figures are only updated every five years.

Yet most economic models use this as the basis of their analysis.

To provide more accurate figures, .id have teamed with NIEIR (National Economics) to deliver economic information to local government, based on accurately modeling jobs in each industry sector.

This information is also available, in much more detail, through economy.id - our online economic profile developed for local government areas.

Not only will economy.id tell you how many jobs there are in each industry - it will tell you have many have been added (or lost) EACH YEAR.

So - if you're using a Census based model to measure the number of jobs in your LGA, you might want to compare them to the figures for every LGA in Australia, using our free National Economic Indicators site.

To find out more about economy.id, you can download the brochure or visit our website to see who else is using economy.id and visit their online economic profiles.

Spotlight on NZ

Housing Jack's beanstalk - Auckland's Unitary plan

In the last NZ blog we discussed historical growth in Auckland and talked only briefly about growth projections for Auckland.

However, Statistics NZ's projection that Auckland's population will grow by a million people over the next 30 years is surely more worthy of a Jack and the Beanstalk heading.

Inside .id

More online tools updates

Profile.id

In the last week, we have added two exciting new features to profile.id, to further help with telling the demographic story of your area. Both of these tools are found under the "Downloads" menu heading:

Data exporter - The community profiles in profile.id are designed to allow you to do look at many of the characteristics of the people who live in a geographic area of interest.

But sometimes you may wish compare one topic across many geographic areas.

To do this we have created the data exporter. The data exporter allows you to extract any of the raw data which underlies profile.id. You can:

Extract data for any combination of suburbs, the whole LGA and benchmark areas.
See the raw data for the benchmarks, not just the percentages.
Extract data for any combination of years, 2011, 2006, 2001, 1996 and 1991.
Extract data for any topic on profile.id - including data not presented in the main part of profile, such as single year of age data and very small birthplace/language groups.
Export all data into excel for further analysis.

Click here to see an example from Adelaide Hills Council, but you'll find this feature on any profile.id site.

Custom reports - The custom reports feature enables you to produce a PDF report based on any or all topics in profile.id, fully formatted for printing, with a cover page and table of contents.

Select the parameters of the report and one will be emailed to you, usually within a few minutes. You can:

Select all topics in the community profile, or select only the topics that are relevant to your project.
Change the benchmark area in the reports and use any benchmark available on the site.
Choose to compare the 2011 data to either 2006 or 2001 in the reports.
Include information from the specialist profiles in the reports, including the indigenous profile.

Click here to see an example from the Logan City Council, but you'll find this feature on any profile.id site.

A word from our researchers

Australian population growth trends in 2012

The ABS recently released their small area population estimates for the year ended June 2012.

This is the first insight into population change at smaller areas of geography since the 2011 Census.

In their analysis, the ABS has moved towards looking at population change at SA2 or SA3 level.

The publication Regional Population Growth (ABS Cat. no 3218.0) contains a wealth of information on population change for LGAs.

What are some of the highlights from this ABS release?

Tips and tricks

Understanding local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations

Here at .id, we have just launched our first "community of interest" profile based on the 2011 profile.id platform.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (indigenous) community profile lets councils look in detail at their indigenous community, how it relates to the wider population and the region, and how it is changing.

Many councils already subscribe to this module, and it is available to any Council with a significant indigenous population so add to their subscription.

So what does the indigenous profile show?

Final word

What's the population of "The Air"?

At .id we usually present and discuss demographic information about cities, towns, regions and even countries.

But there's a growing population of people who are not even on the ground - those people who are currently, at this moment, flying somewhere in an aircraft.

So what is the population of this group - and where can you see all their flights represented on an interactive map?

+61 3 9417 2205 info@id.com.au
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