The population of Mississauga is 717,961. This makes Mississauga the seventh largest city in Canada, and the third largest city in Ontario.
This data is from the 2021 census. It shows that Missisauga is the only major city in Canada to record a fall in population between the 2016 and 2021 censuses.
Mississauga along with Brampton, Canada’s 9th largest city, is a part of the Greater Toronto Area.
Although it was originally founded as a suburb of Toronto, today Mississauga is a city in its own right. Click here to read more about the population of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area.
Today, the Mississauga population is equivalent to 2.1% of the population of Canada and 5.5% of the population of Ontario.
Mississauga Population Growth
Mississauga’s population had been growing rapidly, but in recent years its growth has slowed to a crawl and now begun to decline.
Over the the past five years (2016-2021) it’s population decreased by 0.5% and over the preceding five years (2016-2021) increase was just 1.1%.
Despite this, the Mississauga city government predicts that by 2041 the Mississauga population will be 878,400.
The table below lists the population of Mississauga at every census year since 1971.
| Year | Population | Percentage Increase |
| 1971 | 172,352 | n/a |
| 1976 | 250,017 | 45.1% |
| 1981 | 315,055 | 26.0% |
| 1986 | 374,005 | 18.7% |
| 1991 | 463,388 | 23.9% |
| 1996 | 544,382 | 17.5% |
| 2001 | 612,925 | 12.6% |
| 2006 | 688,549 | 9.1% |
| 2011 | 713,443 | 6.7% |
| 2016 | 721,599 | 1.1% |
| 2021 | 717,961 | -0.5% |
Mississauga Population Density
Mississauga covers an area of 292.4 km². Based on its 2016 population of 721,599, the population density of Mississauga is 2467.6 people per km² or 6,391.1 people per square mile.
Languages in Mississauga
English is most commonly spoken language in Mississauga. The 2011 census revealed that English was the mother tongue of 47.6% of the city’s population.
The next most commonly spoken languages were Urdu (4.9%), Polish (4.1%), Punjabi (3.2%) and Arabic (3.1%).
In total, more than half (52%) of Mississauga’s residents speak a language other than English.
French is the mother tongue of just 1% of people in Mississauga. However 6.9% of the population reported that they were able speak both English and French.
Race in Mississauga
According to the 2011 census, more than half of the population of Mississauga is non-White.
Data from the census showed that the largest single ethnic group in Mississauga is White (45.8%). The next largest groups are South Asian (21.8%), Chinese (7.1%), Black (6.3%) and Filipino (5.6%).
Religion in Mississauga
Almost 6 in every 10 people (59.9%) in Mississauga are Christian. Other major religious groups are Islam (11.9%), Hindu (7.0%) and Sikh (3.4%). A further 14.9% of people reported that they have no religion.
Among Christians, Catholics are the largest single group. They make up 36.9% of the total population of Mississauga.
Mississauga Income
Per capita income ($41,314) in Mississauga is roughly the same as the average income across Canada ($40,650).
However the average household income ($95,052) in Mississauga is almost $16,000 higher than the Canadian average ($79,102). The median household income is also about $16,000 per annum higher.
This indicates that there is a significantly higher proportion of two income or multiple income households in Mississauga than there are in other parts of Canada.
Sources
Data in this article comes from either the City of Mississauga demographic profile or from the latest Mississauga census profile by Statistics Canada.
