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About Sydney and NSW > People, skills and education

Language Speakers with a Bachelor Degree or Higher Degree

About one in five Sydney residents who speaks a language other than English at home holds a bachelor or higher degree. These people are a valuable resource for employers requiring well educated, multilingual employees.

In 2006 there were more than 231,000 people in Sydney with a bachelor degree or higher who spoke a language other than English at home. This represents 45% of the Australian capital cities' total.

Sydney boasts the highest share of all capital cities of residents with academic qualifications who speak an Asian language at home (except for Vietnamese) or French, Spanish and German.

Axiss Australia notes that the wide variety of languages spoken by highly skilled workers is the reason most often cited by global financial firms for choosing to establish operations in Sydney.

Language Speakers with a Bachelor Degree or Higher Degree, selected capital cities, 2006 (1)

Language Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Other Capital city total Sydney as % of city total
Mandarin 31,671 20,756 7,005 9,778 69,210 45.8
Cantonese 28,278 15,722 3,789 6,660 54,449 51.9
Total Chinese Languages 62,956 39,240 11,302 18,127 131,625 47.8
             
Hindi 11,639 7,514 1,820 2,570 23,543 49.4
Tamil 5,627 3,904 633 1,767 11,931 47.2
Bengali 5,603 1,899 404 1,100 9,006 62.2
Total Southern Asian Languages 43,729 30,411 5,699 11,631 91,470 47.8
             
Korean 9,579 1,784 1,249 1,145 13,757 69.6
Tagalog 9,418 3,498 1,075 1,506 15,497 60.8
Greek 8,824 13,333 978 3,541 26,676 33.1
Vietnamese 7,914 8,067 1,721 3,503 21,205 37.3
Filipino 7,264 3,571 977 1,442 13,254 54.8
Spanish 6,560 3,534 1,543 2,197 13,834 47.4
Italian 6,023 10,587 1,164 5,312 23,086 26.1
Indonesian 5,978 3,909 718 2,717 13,322 44.9
Japanese 3,446 2,006 1,125 1,595 8,172 42.2
French 3,433 2,452 946 1,992 8,823 38.9
German 3,357 2,833 1,235 2,544 9,969 33.7
Thai 2,981 1,606 540 998 6,125 48.7
Total of above 197,995 144,285 33,405 67,429 443,114 44.7
Other languages 33,513 20,154 5,649 12,233 71,549 46.8
Total non-Englsih language speakers 231,508 164,439 39,054 79,662 514,663 45.0


Footnotes:

1: Numbers of people aged 15 years and over with a Bachelor degree or higher degree (includes Masters, Doctorates and Postgraduate Diplomas) who speak the specified language at home.
2: 'Other' includes Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Darwin and Canberra.
3: 'Chinese languages' includes Cantonese, Mandarin and other Chinese languages.
4: 'Southern Asian languages' includes Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and other Southern Asian languages.

Source: ABS, 2006 Census of Population and Housing