AU Wealth Barometer (Suburbs & Councils, ABS)

One transparent prosperity index per Australian SA2 (suburb-sized area) and local government area from ABS Census 2021 medians (household, personal income, mortgage) and SEIFA indexes. Open data, no API key, documented method.

Beta: the upstream API response format is parsed defensively. Please open an issue with an example if a field comes back empty.

Why use it

• Site selection and market sizing for retail, services and field sales in Australia
• Real-estate and investment screening by suburb or council
• Data journalism and research: one clean regional table instead of several ABS downloads
• AI agents: one structured call for 'how wealthy is this part of Australia?'

No API keys, no scraping of HTML – the actor talks to the official public API, handles paging, rate limits and retries, and returns flat JSON you can export as CSV/Excel or call from code, Make, Zapier, n8n or AI agents (Apify MCP server).

Input

Field	Title	Description
level	Level	'sa2' = ~2,450 Statistical Areas Level 2 (roughly suburbs); 'lga' = ~575 local government areas.
regions	Regions	Optional filter: part of an area or state name (e.g. Woollahra, Victoria) or an ABS code prefix (e.g. 1170, 18500).
maxResults	Max rows	Upper limit of returned rows (cost control).

Example input:

{
  "level": "sa2",
  "regions": [
    "Woollahra"
  ],
  "maxResults": 500
}

Output (one dataset item per result)

{
  "level": "sa2",
  "key": "118011347",
  "name": "Woollahra",
  "state": "New South Wales",
  "stateCode": "1",
  "population": 7454,
  "medianHouseholdIncomeWeekly": 3021,
  "medianHouseholdIncomeAnnualAud": 157092,
  "medianPersonalIncomeWeekly": 1635,
  "medianFamilyIncomeWeekly": 4566,
  "medianMortgageMonthly": 4000,
  "medianRentWeekly": 675,
  "seifaIer": 1035,
  "seifaIrsad": 1176,
  "dataYear": "2021",
  "wealthIndex": 92.5,
  "wealthTier": "very high",
  "indexBasis": "householdIncome+personalIncome+mortgage+seifaIer+seifaIrsad",
  "componentsUsed": 5,
  "indexRank": 102
}

Status values

wealthIndex = weighted mean of percentile ranks (0-100, higher = wealthier): median total household income 35 %, median total personal income 15 %, median mortgage repayment 10 %, SEIFA Index of Economic Resources 20 % and SEIFA Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage 20 %. Components an area lacks are left out and the weights renormalised; at least two are required, otherwise wealthIndex is null. indexBasis lists the components used. wealthTier: very high ≥ 80, high ≥ 60, medium ≥ 40, low ≥ 20, very low. Percentiles are computed against all areas of the chosen level, not against your filter. Incomes are Census 2021 medians in AUD per week (medianHouseholdIncomeAnnualAud = weekly x 52); mortgage repayments per month; SEIFA scores have a national mean of 1000. The key-value store holds TIERS (JSON: areas per tier and median index per state).

Use with AI agents (Apify MCP server)

Add the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com) to Claude, Cursor or any MCP client and enable this actor (researchdata/au-wealth-barometer). The agent can then call it directly: describe what you need, the agent fills the input fields above, runs the actor and reads the dataset. Because results are flat JSON with explicit nulls, an agent can use them without extra parsing. Set a maximum cost per run to keep agent calls capped.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.003 per region-scored (region scored). You only pay for results you get; set a max cost per run to cap spending. Higher Apify plans get automatic volume discounts: Bronze −10 %, Silver −20 %, Gold −30 %.

Cost example

At $0.003 per result: 50 results ≈ $0.15, 1,000 results ≈ $3.00. Set a maximum cost per run in the run options to cap spending.

Limits

• Census 2021 is the newest census (August 2021, during COVID-19 lockdowns in parts of the country); SEIFA 2021 is built from the same census. Values are not updated between censuses.
• The ABS does not publish medians for very small or confidentialised areas (value 0 in the source); such components are left out and the index is null with fewer than two.
• The index is a relative ranking, not a valuation. Do not use it as the sole basis for financial decisions.
• SA2 and LGA only. States, SA3/SA4 and postcodes are not included; use the regions filter with a state name to select by state.

FAQ

Does it need an API key?
No. The actor reads the open ABS Data API (CC BY 4.0).

Which year is it?
Census 2021 and SEIFA 2021; every row carries dataYear.

Is this a net-worth measure?
No. It is a relative prosperity ranking from income, mortgage and SEIFA indicators, not household wealth.

Which levels are available?
SA2 (suburb-sized areas) and local government areas (LGA).

Data source & terms

Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census 2021 table G02 and SEIFA 2021, licence CC BY 4.0, read through the ABS Data API. Please cite 'Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics'. Please respect the data provider's terms and cite the original resource in publications. This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the data provider.