The Australian Department of Health is now publishing regular updates showing vaccination rates as a percentage of those 15 years and above, presented by Australian Bureau of Statistics SA3s.
In the public interest, the CEO of Health Geographics Dr Jeanine McMullan has mapped, via the following link, the distribution of those Australian 15 years and above with one jab, two jabs and one jab minus two jabs. These updates will be uploaded to this map link as they become available, beginning with September 6, 2021.
It was felt that those Australians with one jab, awaiting a second jab, were more likely to represent recent vaccination trends, as eligibility criteria has recently extended to younger groups and a broader range of priority groups and this in turn has been heavily influenced by recent Covid outbreaks in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT.
There are 335 SA3s in Australia, with an average of about 60,000 persons aged 15 plus years.
Smaller SA3s in remote or regional Australia contain about 10,000 persons 15 plus years. The larger SA3s include the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne containing up to a quarter of a million persons 15 years and over. They provide a reasonable picture of a significant health event now taking place across the nation.
The Esri map https://arcg.is/1DeX1H0 can be opened and managed on virtually all devices, including PCs, Tables and Mobile Phones.
So many readers enjoyed the online Covid Vax maps from Health Geographics CEO Dr Jeanine McMullan at https://arcg.is/1DeX1H0 that we decided to publish a short descriptive profile of the map data, with some relevant comments for those apparently in charge of the roll out.
Introduction. Those shown in the SA3 maps with both their first and second jabs against Covid as at August 28, included the old and the rich, the traditional Coalition voters, along with their Green-voting neighbours in wealthy inner-urban regions. These two demographics dominated the Melbourne seats which also swung heavily to Federal ALP candidates in 2019.
Those with neither jab were dominated by younger and lower income Working Families, living in the middle burbs, and the Digitally Disrupted, including the longer-term unemployed, living in lower SES outer suburbs and provincial cities, two groups which deserted the ALP in 2019 and returned Scott Morrison to the Lodge.
However, with recent Covid Delta outbreaks in NSW, where vaccination has become virtually compulsory for many NSW residents, there has been a significant recent rise in the numbers of demographics with first jabs only and this has come across wider age and income groups, making the roll-out more egalitarian and focused on classic Swinging Voters, home-buying families with kids.
Process
To get some reasonably reliable demographic profiles of vaccination rates, we took Australian Government Health Department vaccination rates by SA3 as at August 28, for those 15 years and older with one and two jabs and then we controlled for outlying state and regional anomalies, driven up by Covid outbreaks in New South Wales and held back by roll out road blocks in outback regions.
We had to control for outbreaks because it is becoming blindingly obvious that Covid vaccination rates are being driven up among mainstream demographics by Covid Delta outbreaks, which, sooner or later, will impact most harshly on the low-vax states of Western Australia and Queensland.
Profile of the Fully Vaccinated with Two Jabs
The profiling tells us that Covid outbreaks weren’t needed to drive strong vaccination rates among the elderly and the better-educated rich, especially those retirees living off private super funds, who tend to have private health insurance and spend an awful lot of money on their health needs at their Family Doctor, their dentist, their optometrist or their physio.
The better-off elderly persons with Senior Health Care cards were near top of the list.
This group became eligible because their age and vulnerability to Covid Alpha prioritized them in the vaccine queue. And, because older voters typically support the Coalition, those vaccinated as at August 28 voted for the Coalition in 2016, but a bit less so in 2019, when this older and richer demographic drifted to the ALP, especially in Melbourne’s Goat Cheese Circle.
Culturally, we found fully vaccinated regions contained more migrants from wealthier countries, such as Canada, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan.
A lack of faith featured prominently here, with the big Green-voting group of Agnostics top of the list for those trusting in the science and getting access to the rollout.
Those least likely
Those least likely to be fully vaccinated were dominated by those in the bottom income quartile, mainly those on some form of transfer payment, other than the big group of those on the aged pension.
They were joined by the big blue-collar groups of less qualified low-wage earners working as labourers, plant and machinery operators or as transport and logistical workers, which is causing the current delivery chain chaos in western Sydney.
We also found certificate-qualified, average-income earners in receipt of Family Tax subsidies, working as Tradies, service workers or sales workers, often in mining or manufacturing industries.
Migrant groups strongly represented across regions with low vaccination rates were dominated by the big group of Kiwis, along with those born in Vietnam and Pakistan and followers of Islam or Sikhs.
Across these under-vaccinated groups, we came across many of those belonging to the smaller, evangelical Christian faiths, the sort who elected Kevin Rudd in 2007 and re-elected Scott Morrison in 2019 across a wide range of outer-suburban or regional seats in Queensland and NSW.
These include Christians not fully defined, along with smaller groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals, all of which lined up behind Scott Morrison in 2019.
Again, more narrowcast social media networks could have played a part here with evangelicals, as mainstream Christian faiths were not significant markers for the unvaccinated. These included Catholics, Anglicans, Uniting, Presbyterians and Lutherans.
Profile of those with time only for One Jab
Those with one jab only represent persons who have recently qualified to join the queue by virtue of age, location or some other criteria, such as state mandates, as well as those more strongly motivated by recent outbreaks in NSW and Victoria to become fully vaccinated.
Given the delay between the first and second jab there’s going to be some overlap between these groups, but looking at the difference between the two rates tells us something about these groups that a competent Government could find useful.
We will keep an eye on these trends, but all that we could glean so far is that the updated eligibility demographics for those aged 40 and above and a widening range of selected groups aged 39 years and below seem to have democratised the vaccine roll out considerably.
Whereas before the vaccine was mainly for the old and the rich, it is now being taken up more by mainstream Australians: low- and middle-income blue-collar families, paying off their own separate home, with two or three kids at public schools and a couple of cars in the garage enabling commutes to two jobs. We’re talking Swinging Voters here folks and they want their kids safely back at school, with teachers and students – starting with high school students – vaccinated.
Even in the last week, we’re also seeing signs of those overlapping working-class demographics dominating western Sydney, shown in darker green on Dr McMullan’s online map: Transport Workers, Clerks, the Unemployed, Arabic-Speaking families, parents of kids at Government schools, migrants from Fiji the Philippines, Lebanon and Pakistan, followers of Islam.
What we are now seeing are glimpses of what could have happened in Australia, if we’d purchased enough supplies of vaccines when we had the chance, allied to a roll-out becoming open to all wanting to be vaccinated. As my favourite Covid statistician, the ABC’s Casey Briggs would say: who’d have thought?
The lessons your humble correspondent – with no pretensions to expert status on covid – would draw from the evidence here, are that the Government should focus pro-vax campaigns on less well-educated persons, blue collar workers and their unions, along with non-English-speaking migrants and those with time on their hands to waste on social media fruitcakes.
Prosecution of a coherent and consistent case from the Coalition Government would be a good start. A bit of old-fashioned national leadership on a policy framework for mandating vaccinations for key workers would help too. And the sort of ticker we saw from John Howard when he fronted up to a crowd of angry gun nuts wearing a bulletproof vest to argue for gun control.
John Black has pioneered demographic and political profiling in Australia since the early 1970s and is a former Labor senator for Queensland. He is Executive Chairman of profiling company Australian Development Strategies and the relevant vax map can be found at https://arcg.is/1DeX1H0
In the public interest, the CEO of Health Geographics Dr Jeanine McMullan has mapped via the following link, the distribution of those 15 and above with one jab, two jabs and one jab minus two jabs. It was felt that those with one jab, awaiting a second jab, were more likely to represent recent trends, as eligibility criteria has recently extended to younger groups and a broader range of priority groups and this in turn has been heavily influenced by recent Covid outbreaks in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT.
Click for more information.
The Australian Department of Health on August 28 published data showing vaccination rates as a percentage of those 15 years and above, presented by ABS SA3s.
There are 335 SA3s in Australia, with an average of about 60,000 persons aged 15 plus.
Smaller SA3s in remote or regional Australia contain about 10,000 persons 15 plus years. The larger SA3s include the inner cities of Sydney and Melbourne containing up to a quarter of a million persons 15 and over. They provide a reasonable picture of a significant health event now taking place across the nation.
The Esri map can be opened and managed on virtually all devices, including PCs, Tables and Mobile Phones.
During the long months of overlapping Covid lockdowns across all Australian states and the international lockdown to international travel, which is now stretching into years, one of the pleasures we freshwater fly fishermen living in the sub tropics miss the most is the opportunity to travel to some of the more beautiful places on the planet in our own region and overseas. These short breaks can restore our spirits for the rest of the working year and, while nature is nourishing our inner selves, they also provide the opportunity to cast a long fly line to rising trout on pristine inland waters. I miss it so much.
These newsletters from Sage allow us the opportunity to experience these forbidden pleasures through the eyes of others, if not ourselves and hopefully provide you, as well as me, some hope for the future. They cheer me and I hope they do the same for you. There’s lot more of them in the Recreational Research section.
🎙Steve Austin interviews John Black, Founder of Education Geographics.
John discusses with Steve the role of aspirational parents and a stronger labour market in driving the long-term growth of Non-Government schools.
The discussion covers the medium-term impact on Non-Government school enrolments of the Covid lockdowns and the Government Stimulus.
Also covered is the long-term impact of a drop in Australia’s population, compared to pre-Covid projections, and the areas which have been the most impacted during the pandemic lockdowns and for the 20 years after it.
When it comes to their new Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages series, the ABS this week agreed with our ADS post of October 6, 2020: Newer isn’t always better (reproduced below.)
With their latest payroll data release this week, the ABS announced it would extend the time between the final payroll period and the release date, by around 9 days. The ABS says this will improve the quality of estimates, through reducing the level of imputation (by more than half) and revisions in the most recent weeks of data.
For our explanation from last October, you can read our original post below.
Newer isn’t always Better – Covid Jobs update from John Black, CEO of Education Geographics, October 6, 2020.
A week or so back we provided a profile of how the broader Australian stereotypes were faring under Covid jobs lockdowns and today we’re urging a bit of caution when it comes to rushing to judgement on the latest payroll stats – because newer isn’t always better.
Although they don’t quite put it like this, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and I both agree the payroll stats are like a fine bottle of red … you’re well advised to let them age a little after opening, before taking the first sip and rushing to judgement.
The official explanation is contained in the recent ABS release on the weekly payroll data for the week ending September 5, where you can see a section called data limitations and revisions. You can find the technical explanations through this link.
In this section, the bureau stressed that they were trying to help policy makers during these extraordinary times, by releasing data as close as possible to the period when the activity occurred and then make the data as accurate as possible over time, but incorporating new data when it was received.
This means that the latest data is only about 75 percent to 80 percent complete and can take several months to be fully complete and so the final figures look a lot more attractive after ageing than they do when they’re brand new, as you can see below. Even two weeks of waiting can add one point to the index number for the same release.
So far, so good. But what happens when we check out the profile of the 20 to 25 percent of jobs which come late to the party? Let’s check out our two Stereotype Charts for August 8, with the top one based on the original data and the second one also showing the revised data in yellow bars.
The central thrust of the original data profiles shows the big urban and provincial city Working Families and the younger and more aspirational, outer suburban Swinging Voters both faring relatively well from the impact of the Covid jobs lockdown. By relatively well, we mean relative to a (non-Victorian) Australian average jobs loss of about three percent from mid-March to August 8.
When we take a close look at the changes in index numbers for individual occupations and the suburb profiles for where they tend to live, we see that the industries which tend to improve after revision include the better-paid ones we often find in the Goat Cheese Circle inner suburbs, such as professional consulting, finance, media and real estate.
This means our maps for the loss of jobs across inner suburbs tend to look a lot greener after a month or so, after new employer data has been reported from those employers reporting less frequently than every week.
So, until the ABS has amassed enough single touch payroll data over a few years of relatively stable labour markets, to make regular seasonal adjustments, treat the latest weekly data releases with caution, as the revised data a month or so older, is often more accurate.
Just like an old vine Barossa Shiraz, big data often improves with ageing.
Next update, we’ll take a look at the impact of the Federal Budget on those industries most impacted by jobs lockdowns. Talk to you then.
I had a little piece in The Australian today on some of the modelling and mapping work we’ve been doing recently at Education Geographics, mostly for schools. Australian subscribers can find the link here: https://tinyurl.com/283vk8cy
Distinguished Australian Economist Saul Eslake estimates that closing our international borders to tourists and international students is costing us about $22 billion a year in export income in the medium to longer term, but it’s made the recovery in our unemployment rate look much more dramatic, because it’s sucked out a large slice of the growth in the labour market and left the stimulus focussed on relatively few potential workers.
The problem for the Commonwealth Government now is that it’s been relying on lazy growth to boost GDP for so long, that when it closed our international borders last March, it had no cards left to play, as GDP growth dived into negative territory.
So, the Government and our central bank resorted to expansionary fiscal and monetary policies which basically involved spraying billions into the economy to boost demand in a labour market which had just lost a major source of its recent growth – net overseas migrants and international students in particular.
When we worked out some spatial models for future post-Covid population growth and projected these down to suburb levels, we found the biggest impacts from the border closures were in the suburbs surrounding many of our existing universities, presumably the ones which had been most successful at attracting overseas students. You can see our online national map on these demographic potholes at https://tinyurl.com/hswp2938 )
And then, when we modelled and mapped the new ABS payroll jobs data down to suburbs, we saw a significant loss of jobs since March 2020, were in many of the same heavily impacted University catchments, presumably due to a cut in international students also driving a big spatial drop in demand for things like student accommodation and food and of course, demand for University staff.
So, closing international borders and turning off the supply of international students has reduced both the supply of labour near these Universities and also the demand for labour, shrinking spatial economies significantly. To fix these spatial problems we need a fully vaccinated population, safe quarantine facilities and a progressive re-opening of international movement of visitors and students.
Australia is predicted to lose a million persons in the next few years, when compared to pre-Covid estimates.
These losses are likely to be highest in suburbs near universities which had previously enjoyed strong population growth, due to recent large intakes of foreign students and very high levels of net overseas migration (NOM).
Education Geographics has been working closely with Australian Development Strategies and Health Geographics to map future spatial population impacts of Covid. The work has been mentored by distinguished Australian economist Saul Eslake.
An Esri map provided through this link https://arcg.is/1yX4qD shows our projected Covid impact by SA2 on pre-Covid population estimates.
More detailed maps of target areas and numbers will be provided on request to clients of EGS, ADS and HGS.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept new school entrants in Term 1, 2021, but we have limited spaces available for new schools in Term 2.
If your school is ready to plan for your post-Covid future, complete the form below and book an interactive experience with our new 2021 Covid-ready App.
Looking back to the dark days of the pandemic in mid-2020, we were able to tell our Principals which families and streets within their catchment needed support during job lock downs. We then charted the jobs recovery by suburbs so school Business Managers could track the recovery in their local economies.
But that was the easy part. Looking Beyond Covid has only just begun.
From 2021 to 2024, EGS schools will need to plan for a future Australia with one million fewer residents than anticipated, due to a 12 month freeze on younger migrants, with flow-through impacts for internal migration and births. We have modelled post-Covid population projections by age groups and suburbs, so EGS school leadership teams have these new student numbers and can plan their futures with greater confidence.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept new school entrants in Term 1, 2021, but we have limited spaces available for new clients in Term 2.
If your school is ready to plan for your post-Covid future, complete the form below and book an interactive experience with our new 2021 Covid-ready App.
JobMaker misses the real target – written by John Black, CEO of Education Geographics, November 17, 2020
Today’s ABS Single Touch Payroll data confirms that JobMaker has come too late to help younger workers displaced by Covid job lockdowns and it is now missing the real target – older workers in retirement and tourist regions.
Outside of Victoria, Australia’s younger workers are already a lot better off than their parents, when it comes to jobs lost due to Covid lockdowns.
The Jobs Index numbers from today’s ABS release (below) shows workers aged 20-29 years are well ahead of their parents’ generation in the mainland states, with the exception of Victoria.
This is because younger workers tend to lose their more casual jobs in food and retail first during downturns, but then typically lead the recovery. This means, as a policy response, that JobMaker has come about four months too late for all Australian states except Victoria, which was held back by its second wave.
The figure below shows job losses for twenty something’s are still quite pronounced in Victoria, as the recovery there from lockdowns has only just begun (fortunately).
Even when we include Victoria in the national index numbers, the figure below, shows that workers less than 20 years of age now have more jobs than they did before Covid. By contrast, the big job losses by age deciles have been among workers aged 60 years and over.
Your humble correspondent has long felt that politicians overreact to the Labour Force stats which show that when a young person loses a job, they join the official unemployment rate and hence dominate news reports, whereas, when an older person loses their job, they tend to leave the official jobs market until they’re sucked back in by local rising demand – particularly for part time tourism and hospitality jobs in regional centres.
This resonates with the views of University of Melbourne economist Professor Mark Wooden who questioned the Federal Government’s focus on subsidising younger jobs, given the substitution effects which would see young persons prioritised over older workers.
“I worry if they (the Government) are somewhat sucked in by the argument that young people have been much worse affected economically,” he told the Financial Review after the Budget move was announced.
“That’s true, but I think that’s true in all recessions. Young people do worse, they lose jobs faster. But they also do better in the recovery.”
for more information.
