Punjabi has again emerged as the fastest growing language spoken at home in Australia.
Census data 2016 reveals that Punjabi speaking population has almost doubled in last five years.
The number of Punjabi-speakers jumped from 71,229 (0.3% of the total population) in the 2011 Census to 132,496 (0.6%) in 2016.
Though most Australians speak English at home (72.7%) but it has declined from 76.8% recorded in the previous Census.
Over 300 ancestries were separately identified in the 2016 Census. Indians with a percentage of 2.8% are among the ten most commonly reported ancestries
In 2016 nearly half (49%) of all Australians were either born overseas or had at least one parent who was born overseas.
More than a quarter (28%) of the Australian population was first generation Australians (born overseas).
Most of Punjabi speakers live in Victoria. Here is the state-wise numbers of Punjabi speakers in Australia.
Source: Supplied
The 2016 Census data has revealed that Sikhism has grown over 500 per cent in Australia in the last ten years.
The 2006 Census recorded the number of Sikhs in Australia at 26,000 which has gone up to 129,900 just ten years later.
As in the past, Christianity was the main religion reported in the Census by both people born overseas and born in Australia. In 2016, 47% of those born overseas reported an affiliation with Christianity, compared with 58% of the Australian-born population.
Source: Supplied
People born overseas were more likely to be affiliated with a religion other than Christianity than those born in Australia. In 2016, non-Christian religions were reported by 21% of the overseas-born population compared with 3.7% of the Australian-born population.
For four of the top five non-Christian religions, there was a higher proportion who were born overseas than born in Australia. More than a third (36%) of people who reported being affiliated with Islam in 2016 were born in Australia.
Judaism had a higher Australian-born than overseas-born population (53% compared with 47%).
