Who is the average Australian? According to the 2021 ABS census, it is a woman in her 30s, who has a partner and children.

The first tranche of data from the 2021 census, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, reveals Australia’s population is bigger, more diverse and less religious.

More Australian families and households were together on census night in August last year compared to census night in 2017, resulting in a unique picture of Australian homes and families. COVID-19 restrictions in place across the nation meant 96 per cent of people counted were at home rather than travelling when the data was collected.

Australia’s overall population increased by 2.2 million, or 8.6 per cent, to 25.5 million between the 2016 and 2021 censuses.

Australian Bureau of Statistics’ deputy statistician Teresa Dickinson told reporters on Tuesday the average Australian was a woman, aged 30 to 39, who is in a couple with children.

She lives in a greater capital city area with an average weekly family income of $3000 or more.

Almost half the population have a parent born overseas and more than a quarter of Australian residents were born outside the country, the data reveals.

The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people counted increased by 25 per cent, with those identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander making up 3.2 per cent of the total population.
While Australia has welcomed more than one million new migrants since 2017, the data confirms the bulk arrived before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The impact of COVID-19 restrictions and limits on overseas travel showed up in the data, with the number of overseas visitors counted decreasing by more than 80 per cent.

The bureau’s Australian Statistician David Gruen, said the census was conducted at “an unprecedented time in Australia’s history and provides a unique snapshot of the population during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is different from previous censuses”.

He noted that there were just 61,860 international visitors counted on census night, a significant drop from the 300,000 in the country on the night of the 2016 count.

“Areas like the Gold Coast saw the impact of international travel restrictions with a significant drop in people at hotels and motels,” Gruen told reporters.

Deeper insights on the impacts of COVID-19, such as patterns in mobility of the population between censuses, employment arrangements, journey to work, occupation and internal migration, will be available in the second release of data, to come in October.

The number of Australians born in India increased dramatically since 2016, and it has now gone past China and New Zealand in the country-of-birth statistic to sit behind only Australia and England. The second-largest increase in country of birth was Nepal, with an additional 70,000 people.

The data collecting information on more than 250 ancestries and 350 languages shows the number of people who used a language other than English at home rose to more than 5.5 million people since 2016. Of those, 850,000 reported that they did not speak English well or at all.

Mandarin continues to be the most common language, other than English, with nearly 700,000 people speaking it at home. This is followed by Arabic. Punjabi had the largest increase.

This was also the first time the census collected information on people diagnosed with long-term health conditions. Mental health (2,231,543), arthritis (2,150,396) and asthma (2,068,020) were the most reported long-term health conditions.

“For the first time, we have data on long-term health conditions across the whole population,” Gruen said. “This is critical data to inform planning and service delivery decisions about how treatment and care is provided for all Australians.”

Australia has become less religious over the past decade, with the proportion of self-identified Christians dropping below 50 per cent for the first time and a soaring number of people describing themselves as “non-religious”.

Just 44 per cent of Australians now identify as Christian, down from 52 per cent five years earlier and 61 per cent in 2011.

In 1911 when the first census was conducted, 96 per cent of Australians listed a form of Christianity as their religion.

The data counted a growing numbers of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, with more than 47,000 people aged 65 years and over in 2021, up from 31,000 in 2016 and 21,000 in 2011.

Traditional languages continue to be an important part of these households, with 167 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages spoken at home in 2021 by more than 78,000 people.

The most widely reported Indigenous languages spoken were Arnhem Land and Daly River region languages, Torres Strait Island languages, Western Desert languages, Yolngu Matha and Arandic.

But Professor Sandra Harding, the chair of the 2021 Census Statistical Independent Assurance Panel, said there was undercounting of Indigenous Australians in 2021, a problem that existed at the previous two censuses.

“Despite increased efforts and investment by the ABS, an estimated 17 per cent net undercount of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples has persisted in 2021,” she said.

This is consistent with the last two censuses, and the ABS will examine this further.”

The net undercount of all Australians in 2021 was lower than in 2016 and 2011, she said.

The census gathered data on sex, giving options of male, female and non-binary, and sexual orientation, but did not ask about gender orientation, Gruen said.

“The census did not collect information on gender identity, and therefore it can’t give you an estimate of the trans population,” he said.

“The government determines the topics of the census. And for the 2021 census, the ABS was instructed to ask a question on sex but not on gender and not on sexual orientation.

“There will be an opportunity to revisit that for the 2026 census, and the ABS will be engaging in a public consultation process starting later this year to ask the community if there are other questions that that people think that we should be asking.”