The Census plays an important role in shaping Australia's future and was first conducted in 1911.
Since 1961 it has been conducted every five years.
The results of the 2016 Census reveal some interesting facts about the Pakistani and Urdu speaking community living in Australia.
The number of Pakistani-born Australians has doubled in the last five years.
The population of Urdu-speakers stood at 69,131 (0.30% of the total population) in 2016, an increase from 36,837 (.17% of the total population) noted in the 2011 Census.
Hover on the map below to find out how many Urdu-speakers live in your area.
The state of New South Wales has the most number of Urdu-speakers, followed by Victoria. Here’s a breakdown of where they live.
NSW: 29,722
VIC: 23,205
WA: 5,368
QLD: 4,957
SA: 2,942
ACT: 2,369
NT: 441
TAS: 291
With a total of 69,000 Urdu speakers in Australia, approximately 90 % were born in Pakistan.
Urdu ranked number 16 out of 93 languages spoken at home in Australia. Mandarin was the top-most spoken language followed by Arabic and Cantonese.
In terms of population growth in Australia, the second fastest growth between 2006 to 2016 was of people born in Pakistan (13.2 per cent per year on average), followed by those born in Brazil (12.1 per cent), India (10.7 per cent) and Bangladesh (8.9 per cent).
Over the last few years, Australia has welcomed more Pakistanis than ever before. In 2011, 3,775 Pakistanis arrived in Australia; 5,893 arrived in 2012; 6,347 in 2013; 6,355 in 2014; and 6,313 in 2015.
In terms of ancestry, the top three nationalities in 2016 were English, Australian and Irish. Pakistan ranked 37th among the 124 ancestries.
Pakistan was also the top contributor to the number Muslims in Australia (14.7 per cent), followed by Afghanistan (11.5 per cent).
