Wezen

Methodology

Every page on Wezen is built from public data and reviewed by a person. This page explains where the data comes from and how we work.

Where our data comes from

  • Demographics — Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census 2021, General Community Profile by Suburb and Locality (SAL): population, age, income and housing. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
  • Socio-economic profile — ABS Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). A score near 1000 is around the national average; higher means greater relative advantage. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
  • Boundaries & place names — ABS ASGS Edition 3 Suburbs and Localities (SAL). Licensed CC BY 4.0.

We cache every dataset on ingest and never depend on a live third-party service at page-load time. The 2021 Census is current until the 2026 Census results are released (from mid-2027), at which point we refresh.

Suburb demographics (2021 Census)

Most suburb pages include a demographic profiletaken directly from the ABS 2021 Census (General Community Profile, by Suburb and Locality). Every percentage there is a plain share — one published Census count divided by another, clearly stated total — so each figure traces back to the source. We don't invent a score or weight anything; we group and present what the ABS published, and we name the total that each share is based on.

  • Age profile.The ABS publishes age in eleven bands. We group these into five readable life stages — Children (0–14), Youth (15–24), Young adults (25–44), Mid-life (45–64) and Seniors (65+) — and show each as a share of the people counted by age. We base those shares on the sum of the age bands rather than the headline population: the ABS slightly perturbs small counts to protect privacy, so the two differ by a handful of people, and using the band sum keeps the five shares adding to about 100%.
  • Housing.Tenure (owned outright, owned with a mortgage, rented) and dwelling type (houses, townhouses & semis, flats & apartments) are each shown as a share of all occupied private dwellings counted in the suburb. That total includes dwellings the ABS records as “other” or “not stated”, which we don't break out as their own rows — so the rows we do show can add up to a little under 100%. Median rent, mortgage, household size and income are reported by the ABS directly; we show them as published.
  • Community and work. Each remaining share is one count over the relevant ABS base, which we set out here: residents born overseas as a share of those whose birthplace was counted; those who speak a language other than English at home as a share of those whose home language was counted; Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanderresidents as a share of the suburb's total population; and completed Year 12 as a share of those whose highest year of school was recorded. Labour-force participation and unemployment are the ABS's own published rates, not figures we recompute.
  • Missing figures are left out, never guessed.Where the ABS suppresses, withholds, or simply doesn't publish a number — common in small localities — we omit that row or section entirely rather than showing a zero or estimating. A sparse locality shows fewer tables, and a suburb with no Census record shows none at all, rather than a page padded with invented detail.

Source: ABS Census of Population and Housing, 2021 (General Community Profile, by Suburb and Locality). Licensed CC BY 4.0. © Australian Bureau of Statistics.

How we summarise an area

State and council pages show an “at a glance” panel and short rankings. These are computed only from the suburbs we have already published in that area — not the whole state or council — and each page says so. As our coverage grows, these figures move closer to the full-area picture.

  • Combined populationis the sum of the published suburbs' 2021 Census populations.
  • “Typical” figures (SEIFA, income, age) are the medianacross those suburbs — the middle value, which is less skewed by one unusual suburb than an average.
  • Rankings (largest by population, most advantaged by SEIFA) are drawn from the same published set, and we only show them once an area has at least two published suburbs.

The Suburb Score

The Suburb Scoreis a single 0–100 number that shows where a suburb sits, nationally, on the Australian Bureau of Statistics' socio-economic index. We do not invent our own weighting. We take the ABS SEIFAscore — the ABS's own published measure, which already combines income, education, occupation and housing — and express it as a percentile across every Australian suburb we score.

  • A score of 70 means the suburb is more socio-economically advantaged than about 70% of the Australian suburbs we score.
  • Suburbs with the same SEIFA score get the same Suburb Score. Suburbs with no SEIFA score (for example, areas with almost no residents) show no Suburb Score at all.
  • We recompute it from the underlying ABS data, so it stays consistent as our coverage grows.

You can see it applied in our suburb rankings — the most socio-economically advantaged suburbs nationally and by state.

What it is not. The Suburb Score measures area-level socio-economic advantage only. It is nota measure of how good a suburb is to live in or visit, how safe it is, or how nice it feels. A lower score is not a judgement about a place or the people who live there — it reflects ABS data about that area. As we add data such as walkability, schools, transport and amenities, we'll introduce a separate, clearly-named livability measure rather than stretching this one to mean something it doesn't.

Source: ABS Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), 2021, by Suburb and Locality. Licensed CC BY 4.0. © Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Best-of guides

Our best-of guides rank suburbs on a single ABS Census figure at a time — the highest median weekly household incomes, and the largest by population — nationally and for each state and territory. Each guide is a transparent sort on one number shown on every suburb page, not a blended “best places” score.

  • Income guides require at least 1,000 residents.The ABS records household income in bands topped by “$8,000 or more”, and a median across only a handful of households is statistically noisy. The floor keeps these lists to places where the median is meaningful — and the page says so.
  • We rank only the topof a positive or neutral measure. We never publish a “worst” or “least” list, and we only include suburbs that carry the figure and are large enough to index.
  • A guide is created only where enough suburbs qualify, so we don't mint thin pages.

Household income is a factual ABS measure. It is not a measure of housing affordability, cost of living, or how good a place is to live or visit.

How a page is made

  • We assemble the data for a suburb and draft the page with AI assistance.
  • A named human editor reviews each page, adds local detail, and is accountable for it. Pages show a byline, a reviewer, and a real “Updated” date.
  • Sources are listed on the page, and every page has a corrections link.
  • We use data-driven language and avoid characterising places in ways the data doesn't support.

Place names & cultural respect

We use official Australian place names and acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters across Australia. We seek advice before publishing culturally sensitive content.

Found a mistake?

We fix errors quickly. Please tell us and we'll correct the page.