Employment Heatmap
Where the work is, and where the businesses are. Unemployment, labour force and registered-business counts for all 537 Australian council areas — the demand side sitting underneath every property market, on one map.
This map is free, in full. The platform behind it goes further.
Every layer here is open — no login, no locked scores, no sample-size gates. What a subscription adds is the property side of the same council areas: HtAG RCS™ growth, risk and cashflow scores at suburb level, commercial listings and leasing data, and the research tools that turn a shortlist into a decision.
How to read the map
Four things worth knowing before you draw a conclusion from a colour.
Two groups, one map
The left panel splits into Labour market and Firms. The first asks whether people here have work; the second asks whether there are businesses here to employ them. Pick one layer and the whole map recolours around it.
Blue is not always good
For unemployment the scale is flipped on purpose — blue means a low rate, red means a high one. For counts like labour force or registered businesses, blue simply means more. Read the legend, not the habit.
Smoothed, not a snapshot
The labour-market layers are four-quarter smoothed estimates. That deliberately blunts one-off quarterly noise in small councils — so treat the direction as the signal, not a single quarter’s decimal place. The exact vintage of each layer is printed under the layer list on the map.
Scope before you scan
Australia-wide, a single state, or one of five capital cities — the region control reframes the map and the colour bands stay fixed, so areas remain comparable. Search jumps to a council; the download button saves the current view as an image.
Six layers. Two questions.
All six layers are free, and all 537 council areas are covered. Where a single figure can’t be computed the map greys it out rather than guessing.
Do the people who live here have work?
Is there enterprise here to employ them?
This scale runs the other way to the count layers. Low unemployment is blue, high is red; on Registered businesses or Labour force, blue is simply the larger number. Every layer prints its own key on the map — read that one, not this one.
Six maps, one platform.
Jobs tell you whether a market has an economy. These tell you what the property in it is doing.
LGA & Suburb Heatmaps
Prices, growth and yields across Australia at council and suburb level, plus the HtAG RCS™ composite scores.
Open residential heatmapCommercial Discovery Map
Industrial, office and retail listings, selling pace and leasing speed by council area.
Open commercial mapPopulation Heatmap
Who is arriving and who is leaving — population change split into births, internal moves and overseas migration.
Open population mapMarkets in the Moment (MiM)
A nested treemap giving an instant bird’s-eye view of the residential market.
Open MiMHtAG SchoolRank™
Every Australian school mapped by education quality.
Open SchoolRankEmployment Heatmap
Unemployment, labour force and registered businesses by council area.
You’re hereLocal Services Heatmap
Childcare, hospitals and aged care by council area — who can actually live in a market.
Open services mapAn economy is the thing a property market sits on. Check it first.
Rents get paid out of wages, and wages come from employers. Scan the jobs and firms picture here, then take the council areas that hold up into the residential and commercial data.
Sources: unemployment and labour force from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations Small Area Labour Markets, four-quarter smoothed. Business counts from the Australian Bureau of Statistics business register, recorded against each business’s registered address — which is not always where its staff work. Businesses per 1,000 people uses ABS Regional population. The vintage of each layer is printed under the layer list on the map. Small councils carry wider error bands than large ones. Figures are derived from official statistics and statistical modelling and are not a guarantee of future performance. Nothing on this page is financial advice. HtAG RCS™, StreetLens™ and SchoolRank™ are trademarks of HtAG Analytics.