Steinbach's population has grown by more than 22 per cent in the past five years, far pushing it past Thompson as Manitoba's third largest city.

Statistics Canada released the first batch of numbers from the 2011 census on Wednesday.

Since 2006 Steinbach's population has grown to 13,524 — up more than 22 per cent in that period, mainly due to immigration from Germany. Steinbach is now Manitoba's third largest city, surpassing Thompson for that title.

But it's not just European immigrants who are calling the city, about a half hour drive southeast of Winnipeg, home.

In 2011, Steinbach welcomed people from 44 different countries, while populations in the surround municipalities of Hanover and LaBroquerie also saw sharp population gains. Steinbach Mayor Chris Goertzen said most of the jobs supporting the growth are in smaller companies that are seeing their employee numbers double. Local developers have responded to the trend. "They take care of making sure that we have enough housing units," Goertzen said. "At the same time, we as a city need to make sure our infrastructure's in place. We have a lot of businesses that have maybe five, 10, 15, 20 people working there and often those companies are the ones that grow to 50," Goertzen said.

Winnipeg, on the other hand, saw much slower population growth while other western provinces led the way in population growth. The Census showed that Alberta saw the highest increase at 10.8 per cent, followed by British Columbia (7.0 per cent) and Saskatchewan (6.7 per cent). Manitoba (5.2 per cent) was the only western province with a population increase below the national average.