This 14th biennial flagship report provides an overview of the current state of the welfare of Australians, drawing on Australia’s welfare indicators from multiple sources, and explores a range of welfare topics.

The report is part of a product suite including:

• Australia’s welfare snapshots – 41 web pages presenting key facts on housing, education and skills, employment and work, income and finance, government payments, social support, justice and safety, and Indigenous Australians.
• Australia’s welfare 2019: in brief – presenting key findings and concepts from the snapshots to tell the story of welfare in Australia.
• Australia’s welfare indicators – an interactive data visualisation tool that measures welfare system performance, individual and household determinants and the nation’s wellbeing.

It defines welfare as a concept that extends beyond support payments and services, encompassing the broad range of individual, social, political and environmental factors that can influence a person’s wellbeing. As the characteristics of the Australian population change, understanding current and emerging societal shifts behind this change is crucial to appropriately and effectively deliver health and welfare services.

The report highlights the importance of data to understanding how people engage with and navigate welfare services, and in particular, the value of linking data across different services to understand pathways and relationships between health and welfare. It also stresses the importance of using public data for public good, while protecting privacy. It identifies a range of data gaps and areas where the use of data can be improved.

It identifies a range of areas in which the welfare of Australians is improving, based on trends over the last ten years. These include:

• The proportion of people aged 20–24 completing Year 12 or a non-school qualification.
• Many crime rates including the proportion of people experiencing physical assault and the proportion of households experiencing malicious property damage.
• The proportion of Indigenous households that are over-crowded.

Areas in which the welfare of Australians is declining based on trends include:

• The proportion of low-income rental households in housing stress.
• The proportion of unemployed people aged 15 and over, looking for work for more than a year.
• The proportion of homelessness services clients experiencing homelessness more than once within a reporting year.

There is a significant opportunity to link data sets across different services to understand how these factors interact supporting better outcomes for individuals, families and communities. However, there exists a range of issues which limit data linkage at present.

The report highlights the interconnectedness of factors such as education, employment, housing and health – with each other, and with Australia’s overall social and economic wellbeing.

1. The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare has developed a framework of 47 indicators for Australia’s welfare, and has been reporting on welfare indicators since 2003, providing a robust and credible source of information on Australia’s welfare which could be used to support social risk and impact analysis.
2. On many measures, Australians enjoy good health and welfare. Australia has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, which continues to rise, as do the years of life lived in full health. The majority of people rate their health and life satisfaction highly. But disparities in outcomes exist for some driven by a range factors acting together.
3. Disadvantage can extend from one generation to the next. Rising income and wealth inequality is reducing social mobility (a shift in a person’s socioeconomic position) by making it harder for disadvantaged Australian children to avoid becoming disadvantaged adults. Australian evidence on intergenerational disadvantage needs to be translated into effective policy design.
4. Over the past two decades, there has been a notable fall in the number of people aged 18–64 receiving income support. However, those who do receive income support are often long term recipients. In 2018, almost three in four income support recipients aged 18–64 had been on a payment for two or more years.
5. Income support receipt and reliance varies among Indigenous Australians. Around half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians aged 15–64 received an income support payment in 2016. In 2016, income support receipt was lower in major cities than in remote and very remote areas, and higher in the 20–39 age group than in the 55-59 and 15-19 age groups.
6. For Australian jobs, 10.6% are at high risk of automation and a further 25% may change substantially in the way work is done. Increasing automation is changing the nature of, and skills involved. Australian workers need to be flexible and acquire new skills as tasks within jobs change, pointing to the need for planning, financing and delivering re-skilling and job transition programs.
7. Ideas about disability and appropriate supports have evolved over time, with inclusion and choice central to social and policy changes. There are a range of opportunities for improving data collection and integration to better understand needs and outcomes of people with disability.
8. Elder abuse is estimated to affect up to one in seven older Australians. Strategies to address the issue will need cross-jurisdictional and cross-sector involvement, supported by better data on key patterns and trends.
9. Occupations projected to grow in the 5 years to 2023 include professionals, and community and personal service workers. Occupations projected to decline include contract, program and project administrators; secretaries; personal assistants; information officers; and bank workers.
10. In addition to changing jobs, new technology is creating new jobs—some of these result from combining tools and techniques from across different industries in novel ways, creating new fields of expertise, as well as hybrid jobs.