This dataset is derived from data stored in Landgate’s medium scale Topographic Geodatabase (TGDB). It provides a very broad view of the states population centres. License Information Use of Fundamental Land Information published to data.wa.gov.au is subject to the conditions of a Personal Use Agreement. © Western Australian Land Information Authority (Landgate). Use of Landgate data is subject to Personal Use License terms and conditions unless otherwise authorised under approved License terms and conditions.

Chart and table of population level and growth rate for the Perth, Australia metro area from 1950 to 2025.

Humans have been living on the continent of Australia (name derived from "Terra Australis"; Latin for "the southern land") for approximately 65,000 years, however population growth was relatively slow until the nineteenth century. Europeans had made some contact with Australia as early as 1606, however there was no significant attempt at settlement until the late eighteenth century. By 1800, the population of Australia was approximately 350,000 people, and the majority of these were Indigenous Australians. As colonization progressed the number of ethnic Europeans increased while the Australian Aboriginal population was decimated through conflict, smallpox and other diseases, with some communities being exterminated completely, such as Aboriginal Tasmanians. Mass migration from Britain and China After the loss of its American colonies in the 1780s, the British Empire looked to other parts of the globe to expand its sphere of influence. In Australia, the first colonies were established in Sydney, Tasmania and Western Australia. Many of these were penal colonies which became home to approximately 164,000 British and Irish convicts who were transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868. As the decades progressed, expansion into the interior intensified, and the entire country was claimed by Britain in 1826. Inland colonization led to further conflict between European settlers and indigenous Australians, which cost the lives of thousands of natives. Inward expansion also saw the discovery of many natural resources, and most notably led to the gold rushes of the 1850s, which attracted substantial numbers of Chinese migrants to Australia. This mass migration from non-European countries eventually led to some restrictive policies being introduced, culminating with the White Australia Policy of 1901, which cemented ethnic-European dominance in Australian politics and society. These policies were not retracted until the second half of the 1900s. Independent Australia Australia changed its status to a British dominion in 1901, and eventually became independent in 1931. Despite this, Australia has remained a part of the British Commonwealth, and Australian forces (ANZAC) fought with the British and their Allies in both World Wars, and were instrumental in campaigns such as Gallipoli in WWI, and the South West Pacific Theater in WWII. The aftermath of both wars had a significant impact on the Australian population, with approximately 90 thousand deaths in both world wars combined, as well as 15 thousand deaths as a result of the Spanish flu pandemic following WWI, although Australia experienced a significant baby boom following the Second World War. In the past fifty years, Australia has promoted immigration from all over the world, and now has one of the strongest economies and highest living standards in the world, with a population that has grown to over 25 million people in 2020.

The workforce dataset contains monthly workforce sizes from July 2005 to June 2018 in the eight Australian capital cities with estimated stratification by indoor and outdoor workers. It is included in both csv and rda format. It includes variables for:

Year Month GCCSA (Greater Capital City Statistical Area, which is used to define capital cities) Date (using the first day of the month) fulltime: Fulltime workers parttime: Parttime workers n. Overall workers outorin. Estimated indoor or outdoor status

This data are derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Labour Force, Australia, Detailed, LM1 dataset: LM1 - Labour force status by age, greater capital city and rest of state (ASGS), marital status and sex, February 1978 onwards (pivot table). Occupational data from the 2006, 2011 and 2016 Census of Population and Housing (ABS Census TableBuilder Basic data) were used to stratify this dataset into indoor and outdoor classifications as per the "Indooroutdoor classification.xlsx" file. For the Census data, GCCSA for the place of work was used, not the place of usual residence.

Occupations were defined by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO). Each 6-digit ANZSCO occupation (the lowest level classification) was manually cross-matched with their corresponding occupation(s) from the Canadian National Occupation System (NOC). ANZSCO and NOC share a similar structure, because they are both derived from the International Standard Classification of Occupations. NOC occupations listed with an “L3 location” (include main duties with outdoor work for at least part of the working day) were classified as outdoors, including occupations with multiple locations. Occupations without a listing of "L3 location" were classified as indoors (no outdoor work). 6-digit ANZSCO occupations were then aggregated to 4-digit unit groups to match the ABS Census TableBuilder Basic data. These data were further aggregated into indoor and outdoor workers. The 4-digit ANZSCO unit groups’ indoor and outdoor classifications are listed in "Indooroutdoor classification.xlsx."

ANZSCO occupations associated with both indoor and outdoor listings were classified based on the more common listing, with indoors being selected in the event of a tie. The cross-matching of ANZSCO and NOC occupation was checked against two previous cross-matches used in published Australian studies utilising older ANZSCO and NOC versions. One of these cross-matches, the original cross-match, was validated with a strong correlation between ANZSCO and NOC for outdoor work (Smith, Peter M. Comparing Imputed Occupational Exposure Classifications With Self-reported Occupational Hazards Among Australian Workers. 2013).

To stratify the ABS Labour Force detailed data by indoors or outdoors, workers from the ABS Census 2006, 2011 and 2016 data were first classified as indoors or outdoors. To extend the indoor and outdoor classification proportions from 2005 to 2018, the population counts were (1) stratified by workplace GCCSA (standardised to the 2016 metrics), (2) logit-transformed and then interpolated using cubic splines and extrapolated linearly for each month, and (3) back-transformed to the normal population scale. For the 2006 Census, workplace location was reported by Statistical Local Area and then converted to GCCSA. This interpolation method was also used to estimate the 1-monthly worker count for Darwin relative to the rest of Northern Territory (ABS worker 1-monthly counts are reported only for Northern Territory collectively).

ABS data are owned by the Commonwealth Government under a CC BY 4.0 license. The attached datasets are derived and aggregated from ABS data.