Place of usual residence and place of enumeration

The two bases

The ABS defines place of usual residence as the area where a person usually lives, regardless of where they were on Census night. The Census form asks where each person usually lives, and for most people it means the address where they have lived, or intend to live, for a total of six months or more in the Census year. Boarders give the address of their boarding school, people with no fixed address are coded to a special no usual address category, and people who usually live in another country and are visiting Australia for less than a year are coded as overseas visitors.

Place of enumeration is where a person is counted on Census night, so it includes visitors and leaves out residents who were away. In 2021, 95.9% of people were at home on Census night and 3.9% were elsewhere in Australia. In the Northern Territory 81.5% were at home.

Which Census figures use which basis

Each ABS product states its basis, and within one product people and households can be on different bases.

• People. In QuickStats, tables about people, such as age, country of birth, qualifications, occupation and personal income, are based on place of usual residence. The ABS describes the General Community Profile and Time Series Profile as based on place of usual residence too, which applies to their person tables, because it treats usual residence as a person-level variable that can't be applied to families or dwellings.
• Families, households and dwellings. QuickStats tables of family and household composition, household income, tenure, rent and mortgage repayments, and dwelling structure are based on place of enumeration, so occupied private dwellings are counted where they stand. Households made up only of visitors are excluded, and up to three residents who were away on Census night can be recorded on the household's form, so their details still shape the household and family type.
• Place of Enumeration Profile. A separate DataPack that counts people where they were on Census night.
• Working Population Profile. A DataPack that counts employed people by where they work rather than where they live.

The ABS's Census counts of population by state and capital city are on a usual residence basis and exclude overseas visitors. The estimated resident population also starts from usual residence counts.

Holiday areas, mining regions and city centres

The two counts move apart where people travel to. At the 2021 Census, East Pilbara SA3 had 39,529 people counted on Census night against 25,443 usual residents, and West Pilbara had 43,222 against 29,594, which the ABS attributes to fly-in fly-out workers in mining. At the 2011 Census, Cairns SA4 had 239,760 people counted against 224,438 usual residents, 6.8% more, and the ABS noted it services the tourist attractions of the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree. Sydney - City and South had 4.5% more people counted than usually lived there, with many visitors in hotels, and Melbourne - Inner had 3.0% more.

The difference runs the other way in places residents leave. At the 2011 Census, Mornington Peninsula had 265,232 people counted against 271,066 usual residents, 2.2% fewer, because more residents were away than visitors were present.

A business that trades on visitors, workers or a seasonal peak needs a different measure, such as the Place of Enumeration Profile for Census night, the Working Population Profile for daytime workers, and tourism data for summer, since an August Census night doesn't show a summer holiday population.

Usual residence and Censible

Censible's Census figures come from the ABS General Community Profile. Figures about people, such as age, country of birth and personal income, are on a usual residence basis, and figures about families, households and dwellings, such as household income, rent and tenure, follow the ABS's household counts, which are based on where each dwelling is and leave out visitor-only households.

Censible also has the share of people counted in an area on Census night who usually live elsewhere in Australia, leaving out overseas visitors, which shows where visitor numbers were high in August 2021. It doesn't have workplace or summer populations.

Sources: ABS, Comparing Place of Enumeration with Place of Usual Residence, 2022; ABS, Census Dictionary 2021, Place of usual residence (PURP); ABS, Reflecting a Nation: Stories from the 2011 Census, Counting resident and non-resident populations.