Crystal ball gazing: Glenn's predictions for the 2026 Census results

#5 A decline of 50,000 under 5s and about 5,000 5-9s as the declining birth rate hits

Last Census we saw a small decline of 0-4 year olds (-959 people in a population of 1.5 million, so virtually flat). With the fall in the birth rate since then, we’re likely to see more significant falls in 0-4 year olds. My best guess is around 50,000 fewer in the Census, so around 1,410,000 all up, falling despite the population increase overall.

Migrants are having fewer babies too so don’t contribute to the 0-4 age population as much as we used to think (and over 95% of that age group are born in Australia). The next cohort will be affected, 5-9 year olds also recording a small fall ~5,000 individuals. The ‘baby blip’ kids of the late 2000s baby bonus era will be in the 15-19 age range and bump this number up by close to 200,000 (also bolstered by the return of university students after COVID).

#6 +800,000 aged 65+ as the baby boomers move entirely into this cohort

Correspondingly the baby boomers will have all moved through to the 65+ range and should increase that cohort by another 800,000 or so. 2026 is an auspicious year for baby boomers. The peak birth rate year of 1961 is just turning 65, traditional retirement age. Depending on your definition, some people extend the baby boomers to 1964 but that’s arbitrary. The birth rate had already fallen quite a bit by then. Those around the age of 65 are now the youngest of the baby boomers - with their older counterparts in the earlier part of the generation now entering their 80s.

#7 Age at which kids leave home 

I last looked at this in 2016, with the COVID-affected 2021 Census not providing meaningful information on long-term trends. With cost-of-living pressures, I predict that the proportion of 20-24 year olds still living with their parents will rise from 43.4% to 51.0%, just over half. And for 25-29 we’ll see a rise from 17.0% in 2016 to 25.5%. There is a large variation between capital cities and regional areas though, with a higher rate of independence likely in regional areas.

While cost-of-living pressures can cause people to share housing more often, this will not be enough to offset the lower numbers of children, and average household size will drop further, from 2.52 in 2021 to 2.48 in 2026.

#8 Religion – 'No religion' hasn't plateaued yet

Bernard Salt thinks ‘No religion’ has plateaued (39% in 2021) 

I think it’s got a way to go yet, though the increase may not be as large as the 30% to 39% seen between 2016 and 2021. My estimate is that 44% of the population will have ‘No Religion’ including secular beliefs such as Atheism, Rationalism and Humanism.

There has been a consistent declining trend at least in the organised Christian religions and this will continue despite the ageing of the baby boomers, and the total reporting a Christian religion will fall to around 40% – lower than ‘No religion’ for the first time. Due to migration, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism along with other non-Christian religions will increase to a combined total of 12.5% of population.

#9 Volunteering is back

We will see a bounce back after the COVID low of 14% (of people over 15), but not quite reaching the high of 19% in 2016. Expect around 18% volunteers.

#10 15% of us WFH (20% in the big cities)

'Worked at home’ nationally was 21% in 2021 but varied enormously between places, with Sydney and Melbourne having the highest rates but everywhere seeing an increase. This will be keenly watched, with legislation in some states now entrenching the right to work from home for part of the week.

I’m thinking it should be around 15% nationally and about 20% in Sydney and Melbourne, but the difficulty here is the wording of the specific Census question. It relates to Census day itself – always a Tuesday – I would suggest for fun riding your unicycle to work on the day, so you can write in an unusual method – however it will just be coded to ‘Other method’ which kind of takes a bit of the fun out of it (and of course the Census doesn’t provide any information about individuals, which may be why there isn’t a unicycle category!).

As far as working from home – in my experience Tuesday is the most frequent ‘in-office’ day for those who can otherwise work from home, so this may bring the figures down compared to an ‘average’ day – because it’s a snapshot of the day we don’t have visibility on other days of the week through Census. There will also be corresponding rises in methods like train use which collapsed last Census due to COVID. So it will be hard to compare over one Census period – again a more useful comparison may be to 2016, which is available on the .id community profiles.

#11 Over a third of us have University qualifications

Nationally in 2021, 26% of over 15s had a Bachelor Degree or higher qualification. This is likely to pass a third (33%) in 2026 due to two main reasons:

A larger share of young adults now going on to university, much more than the older generations.

Migration largely focused on the skilled arrivals categories. Some countries of birth have a very large qualification rate. Approximately 65% of those born in India (the largest migrant group) have a Bachelor Degree or higher qualification.

#12 Unemployment rate

We will potentially see a rise in unemployment from 5.1% recorded in 2021 – it fell from 2016 and was kept artificially low due to JobKeeper. I don’t think it will be a huge increase though, perhaps around 6.0%, with a small decline in labour force participation due to ageing into retirement (but people are also working longer, pulling this effect back).

Census has never been the main source for unemployment data and doesn’t match the official ABS National Population Survey result (where we get the monthly unemployment rates) due to differences in methodology. However Census has the advantage of being able to look at unemployment for small areas and small population groups (eg. specific age groups or countries of birth) which we do in the .id Communities of Interest module.