Australian Income Management Program: Participant Counts by State and Measure

Monthly updated statistics for the Australian Government's Income Management program are published on the third Thursday of each month. The data includes participant counts by location and measure, active BasicsCard holders, and exemptions by Indigenous indicator. This dataset is produced by the Department of Social Services under a CC-BY-4.0 license, with the latest update from March 2026.

Use Cases

• Track program participation trends over time based on the monthly update schedule.
• Analyze geographic distribution of participants based on state and territory breakdowns.
• Study exemption patterns based on Indigenous indicator data.
• Monitor BasicsCard usage based on counts of active cardholders by state.

Strengths

• Data is updated monthly on a regular schedule (third Thursday).
• Includes explicit data confidentiality rules for small cell suppression (<5).
• Provides links to authoritative legislation and policy guides.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data is provided in PDF format, which may complicate automated analysis.
• Row count and specific column names are unknown, limiting suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Department of Social Services, Australian Government.

Collection Method

Administrative data from the Income Management program.

Time Range

Monthly data, with the latest weekly update from the previous month.

Freshness

Updated monthly; last metadata update 2026-03-19.

Geography

Australia, with breakdowns for the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales.