Sydney: The new population in Australia is estimated to be less than half the Christian population in five years. The Christian population fell from 61 percent in 2011 to 51 percent in 2016 and to 43.9 percent in 2021.

It's the first time less than half of the country identified as Christian. The largest Christian denominations are Catholic, at 20 per cent of the population, and Anglican 9.8 per cent.

Almost 40 per cent of the Australian population reported having "no religion", the Australian Bureau of Statistics says. This marks an increase from 30 per cent in 2016 and 22 per cent in 2011.

Hinduism has grown by 55.3 per cent to 684,002 people, or 2.7 per cent of the population. Islam has grown to 813,392 people, which is 3.2 per cent of the Australian population.

Australia’s total population has exceeded 25 million for the first time. There were 25,422,788 people in Australia, excluding overseas visitors, on census night.

That’s an increase of 8.6% since 2016, and in the past 50 years, Australia’s census count has more than doubled. Our national population has also grown, by about two million people since 2016.

At the same time, overseas visitors decreased by more than 80%, in large part due to Covid restrictions and limits on overseas travel.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population has increased by more than 25% since 2016. The census found 812,728 people identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, accounting for 3.2% of the population.

There’s also a growing number of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with more than 47,000 aged 65 and over compared to 31,000 in 2016 and 21,000 in 2011.

The number of millennials (people aged 25-39 years old) has almost caught up to the baby boomers (55-74 year olds) as the largest generational group in Australia.

In the 1996 census, almost two in five people were boomers. In 2021, each group has more than 5.4 million people, with just 5,662 more boomers than millennials. That gap is likely to narrow, with the millennial population increasing from 20.4% in 2011 to 21.5% in 2021 while boomers decreased by almost 4%.

This was the first time the census collected information on long-term health conditions. The most common responses were mental health, arthritis and asthma, which each had more than 2 million people reporting those conditions.

Overall, more than eight million Australians live with a long-term health condition, and 1.5 million have at least two.

The proportion of those with a long-term health condition increased with age, and females were more likely to report a long-term health condition than males (34% compared to 30%).

The majority of Australians still live in houses, but alternative living arrangements are on the rise: 58,155 filled out the census from a caravan, while 29,369 people were in a cabin or a houseboat and more than half a million were in a high rise apartment.

Of nearly 11 million private dwellings counted in the census, separate houses accounted for 70%, apartments 16%, and townhouses made up 13%.

For the first time, more than 1 million families are made up of single parents, and 75% of them are women. As a proportion of families, this has increased from just shy of 15% in 1996 to almost 16% in 2021.

The proportion of couples living together without children has steadily grown in the past two decades. Of 5.5 million couple families, 47% didn’t have children living with them compared to 41% in 1996.