WORCESTERSHIRE has more than 30,000 extra residents than it did 12 years ago and the males are continuing to lose the county's battle of the sexes.

These are just two facts drawn from the Census of 2001, the regional results of which were published last Thursday and can now be found on Worcestershire County Council's website.

According to the survey, which is carried out every ten years, Worcestershire's population in 2001 stood at 542,107 - 276,220 were female. Yes fellas, more than 50 per cent of the county's residents are female, so I suppose that is good news if you're a single male!

Moving away from the gender issue, for the first time in the 2001 Census, there was a question on religion and the results might come as a shock to those of devout faith.

Of course, Christianity won a landslide victory here with more than 425,000 residents owning up to being God-fearing people.

But an astonishing 68,538 - 13 per cent - said they did not belong to any religion, providing a valuable insight into the religious, or in this case, non-religious beliefs of the county.

More than 38,000 people who filled in the survey chose not to declare their religion.

Bengeworth vicar, the Rev Barry Collins said this was of no real concern, but reflected how times had changed.

He said: "There was a time when people automatically put C of E, but now people can be more honest when asked their religion. It's not a bad thing in that sense.

"People are always suspicious about forms and some people think religion is a personal thing.

"There's also a lot of people who apparently put Jedi as their religion, so there's those who don't take it as seriously as they perhaps should."

While Jedi failed to show up on the census, minority ethnic groups have increased from 1.4 per cent to 2.4 per cent. 13,072 people living in Worcestershire were born outside of Europe.

Another question included for the very first time was health. 70 per cent said they were in good health, and eight per cent of people declared their health as not good.

Nearly 17 per cent had a long-term illness and just over ten per cent provided unpaid care to another individual, such as family member, neighbour, friend etc.

Lots of us moan about being overworked and underpaid and the Census certainly proves the former. 91 per cent of men work between 38 and 48 hours a week and 55 per cent of women work full time.

This compares to the national average of England and Wales, with 90 per cent of men and 58 per cent of women in full-time employment.

And what do the 267,373 employed work hard at? Well, most either work for manufacturers or repair or sell motor vehicles.

At the other end of the scale, 19 people work in fishing and 255 in mining and quarrying, this includes 38 women.

Despite the efforts of the government to get more of us on public transport, the number of people who drive to work has increased by 11 per cent since 1991, going from 62 per cent to 73 per cent.

This is actually higher than the average for England and Wales, although 78 per cent of people who have a car in Worcestershire use public transport to get to work, so maybe the message is getting through.

Emilie van de Graaff, employer travel plans co-ordinator for Worcestershire County Council, said the latter figure was very impressive but suspected that a lot of those people commuted to big cities like Birmingham.

Of the 73 per cent still driving to work, she said: "I guess more and more people are living out in rural areas so maybe they have no other option other than to drive in to work.

She also said: "Such schemes like employers travel plans have only been going about two years.

"The figure is impressive, but I believe we'll see even more people leaving their car behind when the next census is done."