It’s hard to find good men these days

Demographic changes mean there are now many more men than women in many parts of Australia, with the problem most extreme in rural and regional Australia.

Demographic changes mean there are now many more women than men in many parts of Australia, with the problem most extreme in rural and regional Australia.

According to KPMG partner and demographer Bernard Salt, post-war immigration policies saw a spike in the number of young men in Australia, but over time the gender balance has steadily shifted back in the other direction to the point where there are now 9000 more women than men in their 30s – the age hot-spot for relationships.

But the distribution of single men and women around the country is far from even, Salt says.

“Single men are concentrated in rural and regional communities whereas single women prefer the city and lifestyle towns in seachange and treechange communities,” he says.

Australia’s single man hotspot is the north Queensland mining town of Glenden, where apparently there are 23 single men aged in their 40s and just one (no doubt popular) woman. Victoria’s Nar- Nar-Goon and Narembeem in WA are other man-heavy locations.

On the flipside, the highest numbers of single women can be found in the Sydney suburb of Annandale, where there are 1.48 single women to each bachelor man, the Brisbane suburb of Manly West (1.61:1) and, best of all, the Perth suburb of Bull Creek (1.81:1).

Read more on demographic trends