Passaic County remains the state's 9th-largest county, according to census data released Thursday. And Paterson is still the state's third-largest city.

The county grew by 2.5 percent, picking up more than 12,000 people since 2000.

There were 501,226 people living in the county in 2010, according to the release, which offers the first information on population counts, racial makeup, Hispanic origin, voting age population and housing status for communities to come out of the 2010 Census.

The data released Thursday will help redraw federal, state and local legislative districts. New Jersey is losing one seat in the House under the counts. 

Data for New Jersey show that the five most populous cities and townships and their 2010 Census counts are Newark, 277,140; Jersey City, 247,597; Paterson, 146,199; Elizabeth, 124,969 and Edison, 99,967. Newark grew by 1.3 percent since the 2000 Census. Jersey City grew by 3.1 percent, Paterson decreased by 2.0 percent, Elizabeth grew by 3.7 percent and Edison grew by 2.3 percent.

The largest county is Bergen, with a population of 905,116. Its population grew by 2.4 percent since 2000. The other counties in the top five include Middlesex, with a population of 809,858 (increase of 8.0 percent); Essex, population of 783,969 (decrease of 1.2 percent); Hudson, population of 634,266 (increase of 4.2 percent); and Monmouth, population of 630,380 (increase of 2.5 percent).

See the table below for a breakdown of the most populous counties and communities. See the PDFs connected to this article for more information on the racial makeup, the populations of people of Hispanic origin, and populations of people of voting age. And stay tuned to Patch for more community-specific information from the U.S. Census over the next day.

* Census 2000 counts are as published in Census 2000 reports and thus do not include any changes published subsequently due to boundary changes or to the Count Question Resolution program.

**  Toms River township (Ocean County) was Dover township in 2000.