When combining the number of administrative and other “white collar” mining company employees with the number of fly-in, fly-out and drive-in, drive-out workers, Perth easily takes the mantle as the country’s biggest mining town.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Australian Social Trends report said mining industry employment peaked at 276,300 in May last year, up from around 75,000 in 2000.

In 2011, almost 22% of Australia’s mining industry workforce lived in Perth, up from 18% in 2006 before the peak of the boom.

But the ABS acknowledged that since only 5% of Perth’s total workforce was employed in mining, Perth was generally not regarded as a mining town.

“However, both the financial benefits of mining industry employment and the social impact of 'fly-in, fly-out' and 'drive-in, drive-out' working arrangements on partners and children are to some degree concentrated in Perth,” the ABS said.

Of the Perth-based mining industry workforce, 16% worked in the Pilbara and 7% worked in the Goldfields.

Brisbane had the next largest number of mining industry employees but only comprising about 7% of the nation’s total.

Meanwhile, the resources industry has resulted in rapid growth in several regional centres.

The report showed there were 10 mining towns that had experienced the fastest population growth since the last census in 2006 and were therefore considered to be “booming”

The top 10 in order from first to 10th were Karratha, Roxby Downs, Newman, Moranbah, Port Hedland, Weipa, Middlemount, Emerald, Clermont and Dysart.

The census found that at least a sixth of all employed people in these towns, either living or staying, worked in the mining industry.

The WA boom towns also had a high proportion of construction workers.

Each of the towns had average annual population growth of at least 2% in the five-year period between censuses and in all cases, populations increased by at least double the national rate, ranging from 3.4% to 8.6% per year.

"These high growth mining towns tend to have a lot of people on higher incomes but they work long hours,” ABS director of social and progress reporting Jane Griffin-Warwicke said.

“These residents also sometimes pay quite high rents – for example, the median rent for a separate house in Karratha rented from a private landlord was $1300 a week.”

While, the number of people staying in the towns on census night soared, actual population growth was slower, or in the cases of Middlemount and Dysart, decreased.

In Karratha’s case – which is booming thanks to iron ore, oil and gas – census night population jumped by 8.6% to just more than 20,000, while residential population grew at a respectable 7% to nearly 16,500.

Around 41% of people in Middlemount on census night actually lived elsewhere, reflected in census night population growth of 3.4% against an actual population decline of 1.3%.

In most of the towns, more than a quarter of the population resided in non-private dwellings such as hotels, motels and staff quarters, while around 30% rented accommodation from their employer.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of people in mining towns on census night were male – over 60% in the cases of Middlemount, Dysart, Roxby Downs, Karratha, Newman and Moranbah.

“Unlike the rest of Australia, where females outnumber males, high growth mining towns have more males,” Griffin-Warwicke said.

“For example, more than two-thirds of people staying in Middlemount on census night were male.”

However, the proportion of women across the entire industry was increasing, up to 17% from 15% in 2006 and just 4% in 1966.

The majority of people (55%) in the 10 towns were aged between 25 and 34, with a very small proportion of the populations over 65 years of age – just 1% in Roxby Downs.

People aged 25-34 years were particularly over-represented in the high growth mining towns (21%) compared with Australia generally (14%).

"The majority of people in fast growing mining towns are in their prime working years between 25 and 54," Griffin-Warwicke said.

The towns had higher labour force participation rates, lower unemployment rates and worked an average of 51 hours a week against the nation average of 35 hours.

In May last year the average hourly cash earnings of full-time non-managerial adult employees working in the mining industry was $A52.30, against the adult national minimum wage of $15.51/h.

Average oil and gas wages were $75.40/h, while coal miners averaged $53.80/h.

In former boom towns of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Mount Isa, Bendigo, Ballarat and Cessnock, average annual growth was 1.7-1.9%, still slightly above the nation average of 1.6%.