Riverina Population Comparisons
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has begun releasing the 2021 Census data. Population counts for Local Government Areas (LGAs) are crucial for future planning, delivery of services, responding to changes and much more.
Official population counts are based on the census conducted every five years. Between census years, the ABS releases annual population estimates, known as the Estimated Resident Population (ERP). The ERP is based on the last known census count, the census Post Enumeration Survey and administrative data. Between census years the ERP is derived from the census year ERP adding in births and people moving to the region from within Australia and overseas and subtracting deaths and people leaving the region.
Future population projections for LGAs are released every few years by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment. Population forecasting is based on assumptions about how communities are expected to change, specific regional knowledge and known starting points. These factors are used with best practice industry methods to project how a community may change into the future. They are not population targets but are used by the state government to plan services for the future.
With the release of the 2021 Census, RDA Riverina have put together some figures to show how these various population counts and estimates compare to each other, how they have changed over time and how the populations may change into the future.
These figures show that LGAs in our region have different population trajectories. While some experience steady reliable growth, others are experiencing decline, some are holding steady and some have turned a corner experiencing growth after a period of decline. Some LGAs current population counts align well with the latest ERP and projection trajectories and others do not.
It is important to note that while each of these three sources of data have their place in planning for LGAs there are different challenges in putting these numbers together. For more information on some of these challenges and how they are addressed you can read more about under and over counting in the 2021 Census, how the ERP is calculated and rebased with each census count and the reliability of NSW Population Projections.
You can look at this data using either the actual population counts or the percent change in the number of people since 2011 (2011 is the earliest date that is included in all data series). The count shows the size of the population but may give a false impression of the scale of the changes in population counts from year to year while the percent change will give a more accurate impression of the scale of the changes from year to year but will not provide information on the size of the population.
*A previous version of these figures did not specify the difference between the census count and the ERP and gave a misleading impression of the 2021 census count. This issue has been corrected in the documents above.