The Suited Index: Sydney's most professional suburbs, ranked
All 328 Sydney suburbs scored on ABS Census data. Woollahra is first. The story is what happened in the west: 79,600 new managers and professionals between 2016 and 2021, as many as the rest of Sydney combined, and most of them already lived there.
Compiled by Lupo Bianco from ABS Census 2016 and 2021 · Updated September 2026
- 45.2% of Sydney's employed residents are now managers or professionals, up from 40.7% in 2016. That is 157,600 more people in professional work in five years.
- 110 suburbs are majority-professional, up from 75. In Western Sydney the count went from 4 to 18, almost all of them in the Hills and Parramatta.
- Western Sydney added 79,600 managers and professionals, matching the 78,000 added by the North Shore, the east, the inner city and the Shire together.
- The west grew its professionals rather than importing them. 57% of its gain came from existing residents changing jobs, and the west's share of newcomers (35%) is lower than the rest of Sydney's (40%).
- Schofields East added 5,288 professionals, the most of any suburb. Strathfield West rose 12 points with two-thirds of its residents at the same address as 2016.
- Parramatta and Blacktown added 13,700 finance, law, real estate and professional-services workers, more than the CBD and inner south's 10,700.
- Half of the west's new finance and professional-services workers are women, and Western Sydney's finance workforce is now 51% female against 47% for Sydney as a whole. Across all managers and professionals, women were 55% of the west's gain and 57% of Sydney's.
- The gap is closing slowly. Western Sydney has 53% of Sydney's workers but 42.5% of its managers and professionals, up from 41.0% in 2016.
Where the professionals have always been
Ask a Sydneysider where the professionals live and they will point at the harbour. The 2021 Suited Index agrees. Woollahra tops the city with a score of 97 and a workforce that is 72.4% managers and professionals; Paddington-Moore Park and North Sydney-Lavender Bay tie for second, and the rest of the top ten (St Leonards, Double Bay, Crows Nest, Balmain, Darlinghurst, Millers Point, Erskineville) all sit within eight kilometres of the Harbour Bridge.
That picture is still true. Western Sydney has 53% of Sydney's workers but 42.5% of its managers and professionals, up from 41.0% in 2016. At that rate parity is a generation away. What has changed is not where the professional class lives. It is where it is growing.
Every suburb's 2021 rank and score is in the full table at the end of this page, which you can filter by suburb name.
Where the professionals are appearing
Compare each suburb's 2016 and 2021 results on the same boundaries and a different map appears. The suburbs where the professional share rose fastest are almost all west and south-west of the city, and most are nowhere near the top of the static ranking. Against a Sydney-wide rise of 4.5 points, Schofields East rose 15.7 (32.7% to 48.4%), Parramatta North 14.6, Canterbury South 14.2, Strathfield West 12.0, Ryde South 11.8 and Glenfield 11.5.
The darkest patches form a band from Strathfield and Earlwood through Canterbury-Bankstown to Parramatta and out to the Hills. The North Shore and the east, darkest on the first map, are among the palest on this one.
Suburbs where the professional share rose fastest
For each suburb, the share of its employed residents who are managers or professionals in 2016 and 2021, ranked by the rise. The Sydney-wide rise was 4.5 points. "People added" is the change in headcount; the type shows whether the suburb grew from within (A) or through newcomers (B).
Rise in managers-and-professionals share, suburbs with at least 2,000 employed residents in 2016. Millers Point excluded: its change reflects the construction of Barangaroo. Type: A = grew from within, B = newcomer-driven.
Grown, not imported
There are two ways the west could have gained 79,600 managers and professionals: professionals moved in from elsewhere, or people already living there moved into professional work. The Census can separate the two.
Test one: did people move in?
The Census asks everyone where they lived five years earlier. In Western Sydney, 35% of residents in 2021 had lived in a different suburb or overseas in 2016. In the rest of Sydney it was 40%. The west had fewer new arrivals than the east, not more.
Test two: where did the new professionals come from?
A suburb adds professionals either because more people work there, or because the same people are doing different jobs. Where the workforce barely grew but the professional share rose, the new professionals were already living there. On that test, 57% of the west's gain came from existing residents. In Canterbury-Bankstown and St George it was 98%: 12,100 professionals added with almost no growth in the employed population.
Western Sydney regions marked ·. "From a bigger workforce" and "from existing residents" split each region's gain; they add to 100%. "Arrived since 2016" is the share of all residents who lived elsewhere five years earlier. Sydney-wide: 43% from a bigger workforce, 57% from existing residents.
The two kinds of suburb behind the numbers
Every rising suburb in the west is some mix of the two. The clearest examples of each are below; in the tables elsewhere on this page they are marked A and B.
Same streets, new jobs
Established suburbs where at least six in ten residents were at the same address as in 2016 and the workforce barely grew, yet the professional share rose six to twelve points.
New suburbs, new professionals
Suburbs where more than half of residents lived somewhere else in 2016, ranked by managers and professionals added. Parramatta North is the migration story inside the story: 45% of its residents lived overseas five years earlier, and they arrived as professionals.
What changed in your part of Sydney
The suit jobs are growing in the west too
Everything above counts every manager and professional, nurses and teachers included. This section counts only the suit jobs: managers and professionals in finance and insurance, law, accounting and consulting, real estate, and government. Does the west's rise hold up on that narrower measure, or is it all hospitals and schools?
It holds up. Sydney added 74,300 suit jobs between 2016 and 2021 and Western Sydney accounted for 32,400 of them, 44%, in line with its share of all new professionals. The CBD and inner south added the most of any single region, 10,700, but Parramatta and Blacktown together added 13,700. Wentworthville-Westmead alone added 1,164, more than Double Bay and Bellevue Hill combined.
Suit jobs added by region, 2016 to 2021
Managers and professionals in finance and insurance, professional services, real estate and public administration. Western Sydney regions marked ·.
Suburbs where suit jobs grew fastest
For each suburb, the share of its employed residents who hold a suit job in 2016 and 2021. Parramatta North went from one in five workers to one in three; Schofields East doubled from 9% to 19%.
Suburbs with at least 2,000 employed residents in 2016; Millers Point excluded because its change is the construction of Barangaroo.
Half of them are women
Of the people Western Sydney added to finance and insurance, 49% were women, and the west's finance workforce is now 51% female against 47% for Sydney. Women were 42% of the west's gain in professional services and the majority in real estate and public administration. Across all managers and professionals, women were 55% of the west's gain and 57% of Sydney's, though much of that wider lead is health and education. Women are now 49% of Sydney's managers and professionals, up from 47%, and 53% of its professionals; management is still 60% male.
Figures by sex are for all employed residents of each industry, not only managers and professionals, because the ABS does not publish industry by occupation by sex at suburb level.
The four measures behind the index
The Suited Index combines four Census measures, and each has its own leader board. They are not the same list. Erskineville-Alexandria has Sydney's highest full-time share and third-highest income but sits tenth overall because its suit-jobs share is lower than the harbourside suburbs'. Millers Point leads on suit jobs because of Barangaroo. Woollahra is the only suburb in the top five on three of the four.
Where does your suburb rank?
All 328 suburbs: 2021 rank and score, professional share in 2016 and 2021, the change, people added, and how much of the gain came from existing residents. Click a heading to sort, or filter by region.
Suburbs with fewer than 1,000 employed residents in 2016 show no change figures. Suburbs whose boundaries changed between Censuses are marked †; their 2016 figures are population-weighted estimates. "From within" is blank where the suburb's employed population fell.
How the Suited Index was built
- Source
- ABS Census of Population and Housing 2016 and 2021, General Community Profile DataPacks at Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2), the closest official geography to a suburb. Tables used: industry of employment by occupation, labour force status, selected medians and place of usual residence five years ago. Data used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
- Who counts as a professional
- Employed residents whose occupation is Manager or Professional (ANZSCO major groups 1 and 2). Suit jobs are managers and professionals in financial and insurance services; professional, scientific and technical services; rental, hiring and real estate services; and public administration and safety.
- The 2021 index
- Managers and professionals share (35%), suit-jobs share (30%), median personal income capped at the 95th percentile (25%) and full-time share (10%), each scaled 0 to 100 across Greater Sydney and combined. Suburbs with fewer than 1,000 employed residents are excluded, which removes airports, industrial estates and national parks, leaving 328.
- Comparing 2016 and 2021
- 2016 figures are converted to 2021 boundaries using the ABS population-weighted correspondence. Where a boundary changed, the 2016 figure is an estimate and the suburb is marked. Suburbs with fewer than 1,000 employed residents in 2016 are excluded from the comparison, leaving 326. The change in professional headcount is split into the part explained by more employed residents (growth) and the part explained by existing residents having a higher professional share (from within).
- Men and women
- The split of managers and professionals by sex uses the 2021 and 2016 occupation-by-sex tables (G60 and G57), and the split of industry workforces by sex uses the industry-by-sex tables (G54 and G51). The industry figures cover all occupations because the ABS does not publish industry by occupation by sex at SA2 level. 2016 figures are converted to 2021 boundaries in the same way as everything else.
- Newcomers and story types
- Newcomers are residents aged five and over who lived in a different SA2 or overseas in 2016, as a share of those who answered; this covers all residents, not only employed ones. A suburb is typed A (grew from within) when at least 62% of residents were at the same address and at least 60% of its gain came from existing residents; B (newcomer-driven) when at least half of residents are newcomers and at least 60% of the gain came from growth; mixed otherwise.
- Western Sydney
- The seven ABS regions of Blacktown, Parramatta, Baulkham Hills and Hawkesbury, Inner South West (Canterbury-Bankstown and St George), South West (Liverpool and Camden), Outer South West (Campbelltown and Wollondilly) and Outer West and Blue Mountains (Penrith). The rest of Sydney is the City and Inner South, Inner West, Ryde, Eastern Suburbs, North Sydney and Hornsby, Northern Beaches and Sutherland.
- The 2021 Census and the lockdown
- The 2021 Census was taken on 10 August 2021, during Sydney's lockdown, when fewer hospitality and retail workers were employed. That lifts the professional share in every suburb, so part of the Sydney-wide rise of 4.5 points reflects the timing of the count. It is why every suburb is compared against the Sydney average rather than its raw change, and why headcounts are shown alongside shares. Western Sydney leads on both.
- Updates and data
- The index will be updated when 2026 Census data is released. The full dataset is available to journalists and researchers on request.
- What the index is not
- It measures occupation, not wealth, house prices or desirability, and deliberately excludes those things. No "least suited" table is published. The Suited Index is a measure of how white-collar a suburb's workforce is, not a count of people who wear suits: the name is a shorthand, the method is above. Analysis and any errors are Lupo Bianco's.
Scott Grant, Senior Tailor, Lupo Bianco
Scott Grant is the Senior Tailor at Lupo Bianco, a Sydney custom tailoring house founded in 2018 and based in Strathfield. Lupo Bianco compiled the index because the pattern was already showing in its appointment book. Scott is available for comment on the results and on how Sydney's workwear has changed since 2016.
Enquiries and data
Media enquiries, interview requests and the full dataset: Andy, Lupo Bianco media · andy@lupobiancosuits.com.au
When citing this research please credit "The Suited Index, compiled by Lupo Bianco Suits from ABS Census data" and link to this page. Maps and tables may be reproduced with that credit.