The top languages spoken in Australia confirms our changing diversity.
The Australian population as at the 2016 Census was 23.4m people, compared to 21.5m in 2011, up 8.8%. The 2016 Census data released today confirms the changing face of Australia. Italian, is now the fifth most spoken language, other than English. It was number one at the 2006 Census and number two in 2011.
One in five Australians now speak a language other than English at home.
Growth in Asian and Indian languages are obvious. The most dramatic is Mandarin, now almost double the next largest language group, Arabic. Mandarin has grown by over 170% in the decade to 2016. The total number of Chinese speakers (Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu and others) now exceed 927,000 (our earlier prediction of 1m was pretty close!).
The growth is even more obvious when we graphed the growth (or decline) of the top 5 languages spoken in Australia.
Languages other than English spoken at home, 2016 Census.
You’ll hear dramatic stats about the number of people born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas. This is potentially misleading because it includes those born in the UK, NZ, USA and other English speaking countries.
If you’re looking at targeting people from different cultures who might speak other languages then the table below might be more relevant.
The number of people who speak a language other than English at home has increased by almost 1 million to 4.9m, which is 20.8% of the Australian population. The number of people with low English proficiency has also jumped to almost 820,000.
The main Australian Census data is scheduled to be released on 27 June. We couldn’t wait that long. Here’s our prediction…
This month the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released a teaser to last year’s Census – the ‘typical’ Australian at a national and state/territory level. That has only whet Australia’s appetite for more information. If you can’t wait until the major release in June, we’ve gotten together with sister agency, Cadreon to forecast some key population figures.
Last week, we released our forecast of the Top 10 Languages Spoken in Australia. Lots of great reactions from the community. Thanks for your feedback on social and LinkedIn.
You wanted more.
So we collaborated once more with sister agency, Cadreon to forecast the top 10 countries of birth as at the 2016 Census. Cadreon is a leading data and analytics agency with the expertise to build forecast models. IDENTITY Communications, as a leading multicultural marketing agency, brings community expertise. We’ve combined our forecasts of the top 10 languages spoken in Australia and the top 10 countries of birth in a new infographic, below.
The key takeouts?
While the total Australian population is forecast to increase by 11% since the 2011 Census, Mandarin speakers have increased by 77%, Filipino/Tagalog by 97%, people born in China by 90%, India born by 81%, USA by 103%
70% of Australia’s population growth since the 2011 Census come from migration compared to natural growth contribution of 30%
The Philippines is forecast to be the fifth largest migrant country of birth
The maps say it all, migration from China and India are major contributors to our population growth
About our forecast model
We started with the 2011 Census and added net monthly long term arrival figures from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection for the months between the 2011 and 2016 Censuses. Monthly data provides a richer data set and also reflects seasonality. We also factored in the birth and death rates. It might sound easy, but I’ve seen Cadreon’s forecast model, lift up the hood and it’s mighty complicated!
How close we’ll get, we’ll find out as 2016 Census data is progressively released.
I’m proud to say that the forecast team is as multicultural as the data set; the model was built by clever Cadreon peeps from Italian and Greek backgrounds, the data came from our team made up of Australians from Chinese, Chinese-Indonesian and Vietnamese backgrounds. You couldn’t get more multicultural and collaborative than that!
Find out more…
Got questions? Want to know more about this model and other intelligent IDENTITY tools? Interested in communicating with Australia’s growing diverse consumers? Contact us.
