What the 2026 Census will show about business owners by sexual orientation and gender
The 2026 Census was the first to ask Australians about sexual orientation and gender, and its results will describe people who work in their own business by those characteristics. They will not provide a count of LGBTIQA+ owned enterprises, which would require a separate survey that no organisation has yet committed to build.
Topic
Geography
Published
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3 minutes
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Pride in Business, an initiative of Just Gold. Disclosures and editorial principles
The 2026 Census questions
The 2026 Census was the first Australian Census to ask people how they describe their sexual orientation and what their gender is. The questions were put to everyone aged sixteen and over on Census night, 11 August 2026, and each included a prefer not to answer option. Their inclusion followed a period of uncertainty in which the Bureau of Statistics recommended the topics, the government dropped them, and they were reinstated after public criticism. First results are due in June 2027, with releases on employment and income following in October and further detail through 2028.
The current national estimate
The best national figure available until now is an experimental estimate produced by the Bureau from four pooled household surveys, which puts the proportion of Australians aged sixteen and over who are LGBTI+ at 4.5 per cent, or approximately 910,600 people. The Bureau stated that these figures were not population benchmarks and should be used with caution. The LGBTI+ scope of the estimate also includes people with variations of sex characteristics, a group the 2026 Census does not ask about separately. From the middle of next year the Census will provide a benchmark in place of this estimate, and that change will affect every existing claim about the size, distribution and circumstances of LGBTIQA+ Australians.
What the Census will show about business owners
The Census has always asked people about their main job, and it distinguishes those who work in their own business from those who work for someone else. Read alongside the new questions on sexual orientation and gender, these responses will make it possible to describe people who run businesses in Australia by those characteristics, including how many there are, where they live, the industries in which they work and what they earn, subject to what the Bureau releases and suppresses. For economic analysis this is a genuine advance in the available evidence.
What the Census will not show
The Census counts people, which limits what it can offer the sector, because a person who works in their own business is not equivalent to an enterprise on the Australian Business Register: one person can hold interests in several companies, one company can have several owners, and the Census asks nothing about who holds a controlling share of any business. The data released in 2027 will therefore describe LGBTIQA+ owner managers as people, in some detail, while saying nothing about whether a given supplier is majority owned and controlled by LGBTIQA+ people, which is what procurement systems ask. Discussion of LGBTIQA+ supplier diversity has repeatedly stalled on this difference between counting people and counting businesses.
The risk of a modelled business count
Australia is about to acquire a reliable population count without a reliable enterprise count, and the first is likely to be mistaken for the second. Once an authoritative figure for LGBTIQA+ Australians exists, it is probable that someone will apply a business ownership rate to it and publish an estimate of how many LGBTIQA+ businesses exist. Such a figure would be a modelled estimate presented as a count, and it could not be defended once a procurement officer asked how it was derived.
Work required before the data is released
The months before the release can be used to prepare the analysis, which involves identifying which Census variables can be usefully cross tabulated once the data is available and which are likely to be suppressed to protect small groups, determining what an enterprise level survey would need to ask that the Census does not and who would fund it, and assessing whether a person level count of owner managers can be translated into information a buyer could use.
Implications
From June 2027, buyers and policy makers will have a detailed description of LGBTIQA+ owner managers and no count of the enterprises they own. That count will exist only if an organisation decides to build one, and no organisation has yet committed to doing so.
Sources
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. Clarification on new Census questions, 28 July 2026.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2026 Census topics and data release plan: status in employment and business questions.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2021 Census dictionary: status in employment.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. Estimates and characteristics of LGBTI+ populations in Australia, 2022.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. Outcomes of the 2026 Census topic review.
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2026 Census product guide: staged release dates.
Source pages last checked 19 September 2026.
Pride in Business publishes analysis on the economic life of LGBTIQA+ people, businesses and communities. It is funded and published by Just Gold through its impact program. Suggest a story.
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