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Where Australia will need aged care
Australia adds 2.5 million people aged 65 and over in the next twenty years. This page works through where that demand lands, which of the three services it calls for, and what carries it in a given place.
This is a V1 working draft, built from Rob Hall's prototype so the structure and the data can be reviewed. The charts and the area explorer are not here yet: they need page components we have not built. Figures are drawn from Caring for an Ageing Australia and the National Forecasting Program.
The next twenty years
+2.5m
More Australians aged 65 and over by 2045, taking the total above 7.3 million
+1.3m
More Australians aged 80 and over, more than doubling the size of this age group
36%
Share of all national population growth to 2036 that is people aged 65 and over
01
Australia will add 2.5 million people aged 65 and over in the next twenty years.
Between 2025 and 2045 the population aged 65 and over is forecast to grow by 2.5 million, lifting the total above 7.3 million. The population aged 80 and over grows by 1.3 million over the same period, which more than doubles that age group.
Source: Caring for an Ageing Australia, Informed Decisions, 2026.
02
The second wave is the one that fills beds, and it arrives from the late 2020s.
The first wave is already underway as large post-war cohorts move into the 65 and over group. It drives demand for home support, allied health and lifestyle housing. The second wave follows from the late 2020s, when those same cohorts reach the ages at which daily support becomes necessary. These two waves are one generation moving through two stages of need. They call for different services, in different places, roughly a decade apart.
Visual to come: schematic timeline, "Two waves, one generation".
03
Fewer older Australians use residential care than a decade ago, so bed demand is not population multiplied.
Between 2011 and 2021 the share of people living in residential aged care was unchanged below 80 and fell at every age from 80 to 99. People are entering care later and staying at home longer. Demand growth is coming from the size of the cohorts and the acuity they arrive with, and less from any rise in the propensity to enter care. An operator sizing a market by applying a historical penetration rate to a forecast population is likely to overstate it.
Share of the population living in residential aged care, by age, 2011 and 2021
| Age | 2011 (%) | 2021 (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 65 to 69 | 1 | 1 |
| 70 to 74 | 1 | 1 |
| 75 to 79 | 3 | 3 |
| 80 to 84 | 8 | 6 |
| 85 to 89 | 18 | 14 |
| 90 to 94 | 34 | 28 |
| 95 to 99 | 51 | 44 |
Source: ABS, reproduced in Caring for an Ageing Australia, Informed Decisions, 2026.
04
Care need still escalates sharply at 80, which is why the second wave matters more than the first.
Around one in three Australians aged 50 to 54 has a long-term health condition. By 75 it is two in three, and from 85 it is three in four. Residential care use climbs over the same ages, from 4.5 per cent of people aged 65 and over in 2021 to 14 per cent of those aged 80 and over. The age that matters is 80, which is where health and independence stop holding together.
Visual to come: share of the population with one or more long-term health conditions, by age. Source: ABS, reproduced in Caring for an Ageing Australia, Informed Decisions, 2026.
05
More than a third of Australia's population growth to 2036 is people aged 65 and over.
Over the decade to 2036, the National Forecasting Program has the country growing by 3.59 million people. Of that increase, 1.31 million are people aged 65 and over, which is 36 per cent of all national growth arriving in a single broad age group. The 80 and over population grows faster still, from 1.31 million in 2026 to 2.01 million in 2036, an increase of 53 per cent.
Visual to come: where Australia's population growth goes, 2026 to 2036. Source: National Forecasting Program, SA4 forecasts, June 2026 release. Totals are the sum of all 88 SA4s.
06
Four regions will each add more than 20,000 people aged 80 and over, and only two of them are the coasts.
Between 2026 and 2036 the Gold Coast, Melbourne West, Perth North West and the Sunshine Coast each add over 20,000 people aged 80 and over. Two are retirement coasts and two are outer growth corridors, so the largest absolute increases split evenly between the two kinds of place. Among regions holding at least 10,000 residents aged 80 and over today, the fastest proportional growth sits outside that four, with Bunbury on 85 per cent and Moreton Bay North on 79 per cent over the same decade. Melbourne West does both, adding 78 per cent from the seventh largest 80 and over base in the country.
A national average describes nowhere in particular. The variation that decides a site sits two or three geographies below the national figure, and below the state figure too.
Visual to come: ranked bar, largest increase in the population aged 80 and over, 2026 to 2036, by SA4. Source: National Forecasting Program, June 2026 release.
07
Three real places are ageing at the same time for three unrelated reasons.
One is ageing in place, one is ageing by migration, one is ageing because it was built for it. These three need different things, and no national figure separates them.
Endeavour Hills (Victoria), Tuross Head (New South Wales) and Dawesville-Bouvard (Western Australia). Visual to come: three place cards with the share of each area's population aged 65 and over over time.
08
The three services are driven by different things, so they peak in different suburbs.
Each service is scored on five indicators. Only two of the fifteen are used by more than one service, and both are health measures: a core activity need for assistance, and long-term health conditions. Capacity to pay appears under one name twice and is two different things, median household income for home care and median house price for retirement living.
Retirement living concentrates in equity-rich established suburbs, on downsizing potential, outright home ownership and capacity to pay. Residential care concentrates where the standing 80 and over population is largest, and reads acuity through those same two health measures. Home care is the most broadly distributed of the three, on the same two health measures again, plus living alone and ten-year growth in the 65 and over population.
An operator who ranks suburbs once and uses that ranking for all three services is likely to be right about one of them.
Visual to come: three driver profiles for a single established inner suburb, showing which drivers carry demand for each service, not how much demand there is.
09
Cultural background changes what a market wants, not only how large it is.
Among Australians aged 80 and over, 36 per cent were born overseas. At ages 95 to 99, 46 per cent of the Australian-born lived in residential aged care in 2021, against 38 per cent of those born overseas. This birthplace gap holds across every age group above 65, not only at the oldest ages. Language background separates it further: in 2021, only 9 per cent of non-English speaking residents aged 80 and over were living in residential care.
The report attributes the pattern to cultural preferences, family structures and expectations around support in older age, and notes that it shapes which services a community will need, as well as how many. The Aged Care Act, in effect since 2025, raises what is required of providers here.
Visual to come: share living in residential aged care at ages 95 to 99, 2021, by birthplace and language group. Source: ABS, reproduced in Caring for an Ageing Australia, Informed Decisions, 2026.
10
High demand and existing supply are often in different suburbs, which is where the opportunities sit.
In Melbourne's inner north-east, the corridor running from Bulleen through Ivanhoe to Fairfield shows sustained growth in older residents ageing in place, while the facilities sit in the suburbs around it rather than in the corridor itself. The report calls it an aged care desert in a demand hotspot. This kind of gap only appears once demand and supply sit on the same map at a small enough geography. At the LGA level it disappears into an average.
Visual to come: schematic of a demand corridor with no supply inside it. Not a map of real facilities.
11
The care workforce has to grow by half this decade, and that is before anyone opens a new home.
In February 2026 there were 875,578 people working as registered nurses, enrolled nurses, aged and disabled carers, and nursing support and personal care workers. That is 66.8 care workers for every 100 Australians aged 80 and over. Holding that ratio as the 80 and over population grows to 2036 would take 1.34 million care workers, an increase of 468,000, or 53 per cent over ten years.
That same workforce added 324,000 between August 2016 and February 2026, a span of nine and a half years. The next decade needs almost half as many again, in the same time, from a tighter labour market. This is the number to plan against, because nothing in the demand analysis changes if the people aren't there.
Direct care workforce, actual and required to hold the current ratio
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Direct care workers, February 2026 | 875,578 |
| Care workers per 100 people aged 80 and over | 66.8 |
| Required by 2036 to hold that ratio | 1,343,000 |
| Increase required, 2026 to 2036 | +468,000 (53%) |
| Increase actually delivered, Aug 2016 to Feb 2026 | +324,000 |
Source: NERO, Jobs and Skills Australia (ANZSCO 2544, 4114, 4231 and 4233), combined with the National Forecasting Program. The 2036 figure is a requirement, not a forecast of supply.
12
Demand you cannot staff is not an opportunity, and the workforce is thinnest where demand is strongest.
In 2021, 23 per cent of Australia's wider health care and social assistance workforce, some 400,217 people, was aged 55 or over. In several high-demand regions it is a third. Housing compounds it, with the median house price in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs sitting at 40 times a health care worker's median annual income. Fewer applicants, higher turnover and more agency staff follow, and continuity of care suffers.
This is why care workforce provision is reported separately from the demand score. Mixing a constraint into a demand measure marks down the places that need services most.
Visuals to come: health care and social assistance workers aged 55 and over, 2021; and median house price as a multiple of a health care worker's median annual income. Source: ABS, reproduced in Caring for an Ageing Australia, Informed Decisions, 2026.
Find your area, and see which drivers are actually carrying its demand
Area explorer — to be built
The prototype includes an interactive explorer: tabs for home care support, retirement living and residential aged care, a bubble chart of relative demand across all areas sized by the 80 and over population, and a detail panel scoring each area's five drivers against its state average and a peer group of the same place type, with a table view and a separate care workforce panel.
Area scores are illustrative and must not be quoted. The explorer is the single largest piece of component work this page needs.
14
Three things this page cannot tell you about the area you just looked at.
Everything above is built from public data at a statistical geography. It ranks places and shows which drivers are carrying each one. Three things stay out of reach at that scale, and they are the same in every area and for all three services: the catchment a site actually draws from, the supply already committed inside it, and the sites on which something could be built.
This is the same question asked at the scale a site decision actually needs
Placemaker
Statistical geographies give you a shortlist, showing which regions to look at and which suburbs inside them are carrying the demand. A site sits inside a catchment that an ABS boundary doesn't draw. Placemaker answers the same demand question for a catchment you define yourself: forecast change in the 80 and over population from 2026 to 2036, mapped at SA1, with residential development sites marked inside it.
If the next site decision is worth more than the evidence behind it, that is the conversation to have.
Screenshot and CTA to come.