Demographic features of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) include population density, vital statistics, immigration and emigration data, ethnicity, education levels, religions practiced, and languages spoken within the UAE.

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Quick Facts United Arab Emirates, Population ...

Demographics of United Arab Emirates
Population pyramid of the United Arab Emirates in 2020
Population	9,915,803 (2022 est.)
Growth rate	0.58% (2022 est.)
Birth rate	10.81 births/1,000 population (2022 est.)
Death rate	1.56 deaths/1,000 population (2022 est.)
Life expectancy	79.56 years
• male	78.21 years
• female	80.99 years
Fertility rate	1.64 children born/woman (2022 est.)
Infant mortality rate	5.14 deaths/1,000 live births
Net migration rate	3.45 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2022 est.)
Age structure
0–14 years	14.45%
15–64 years	83.65%
65 and over	1.90%
Sex ratio
Total	2.21 male(s)/female (2022 est.)
At birth	1.06 male(s)/female
Under 15	1.06 male(s)/female
65 and over	1.86 male(s)/female
Nationality
Nationality	Emirati
Language
Official	Arabic
Spoken	Arabic, English, Hindi–Urdu, Malayalam, Pashto, Tagalog, Persian

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The United Arab Emirates experienced a significant population increase in recent years as a result of major economic growth in certain economic sectors. This led to an influx of workers from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, increasing the population from 4.1 million in 2005 to roughly 9.5 million in 2018.^[5] As of 2018, the number of UAE citizens is around 11.5% and the remaining 88.5% made up of expatriate workers, the largest proportion of expats in the world in relation to the nationals (with the exception of the Vatican). The largest group of non-UAE nationals are South Asian 59.4% (includes citizens from the subcontinent, like Indians 38.2%, Bangladeshi 9.5%, Pakistani 9.4%, others 2.3%), Egyptian 10.2%, Filipino 6.1%, other 12.8%.^[6]

Female citizens and non-citizens account for 28% percent of the UAE's population due to the high level of male foreign workers.^[7] The majority of the UAE population falls in the age group of 25 to 54 year old. A large part of this can be attributed to the expatriate worker population who fall in the age category.^[8] Population is heavily concentrated to the northeast on the Musandam Peninsula, the three largest Emirates - Dubai (2.7 million), Abu Dhabi (1.9 million) and Sharjah (1.4 million), are home to nearly 75% of the population.^[9][10][11]

The population of the UAE in 2018 was 9,630,959, a 1.52% increase from 2017. In 2019, the population was 9,770,529, a 1.45% increase from 2018.^[12] The current population of the UAE stands at 9,991,089 million, a 1.02% increase from 2020.^[13]

According to sources, the 2021 UAE population including expats is 9.99 million, of which 69% of the population is male and 31% of the population is female.^[14][15][16] The total expat population in UAE has now come to 8.84 million, which constitutes approximately 89% of the population. Emiratis or the UAE nationals are only 11% or 1.15 million today. While taking a closer look at the 2021 UAE population by nationality, there are people from more than 200 nationalities living and working in the country. All of these workers required to work daily for 8 hours, or 48 hours per week as per the Article 15 of the UAE Labour Law.^[17] However, in Ramadan these timings are reduced by the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE) to 6 hours, and 36 hours a week.^[18] This gives workers a sigh of relief and time to pray and spend time with their families during the Holy Month. Currently, the Indian population in UAE is the highest with 2.75 million, followed by Pakistanis with 1.27 million. The UAE has around 0.75 million Bangladeshi nationals, 0.56 million Filipinos, and 0.48 million Iranians. There are also people from Egypt (0.42 million), Nepal (0.32 million), Sri Lanka (0.32 million), China (0.21 million) and the rest of the world (1.79 million).^[19][20] In 2023, the population of United Arab Emirates grew by 0.8%, reaching 9,516,871. While the population density of the Emirates has reached a record 114 per km².^[21]

The United Arab Emirates government have always focused on increasing the quality of education, allowing female access to higher education and attaching importance to their achievements. Currently, there are more women (58%) in higher education than men. However, the unemployment rate for women is more than five times higher than it is for men. The most popular program is business which has the highest number of graduates, and the most second popular program is humanities and social science.^[7] The UAE relies on migrant workers, and currently they make up a majority of the population and will continue to increase and will consist of 88.2 percent of the population in 2030.^[25]

• Emirati nationals 11.6%
• Other Arab and Iranian nationalities ≈18%
• South Asian nationalities 59%
• Other expatriate nationalities (includes Westerners, East Asians and Africans) ≈12%

Although Arabic is the official language, the most used language is English. English is also the main medium of instruction at all levels of schooling.^[34]

Emirati people speak Gulf Arabic.^[35] The Achomi language (Persian dialect) is also spoken by a 303,000 people in the UAE.^[36][37]

Other languages spoken in the UAE, due to immigration, include other Arabic dialects (such as Levantine Arabic), Malayalam (1,060,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Hindi–Urdu, Marathi, Persian, Cebuano, Pashto (144,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Kannada, Bengali (337,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Punjabi (201,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Odia, Telugu, Baluchi and Southern Baluchi (379,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Sinhala (121,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Russian, Ukrainian, Somali, Tagalog (303,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Nepali, Mandarin, Tamil (455,000 speakers in the UAE^[37]), Spanish, Italian and Greek.

In 2019, Abu Dhabi included Hindi as third official court language.^[38][39] Currently, the UAE government provides lectures and tests to obtain a driving license in Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Bengali, besides Arabic and English.^[40]

Religions are represented in the UAE as follows:

• Islam (official) 76%
• Christian 9%
• Other 15% (primarily Hindu and Buddhist, a small minority are Parsis, Baháʼí, Druze, Sikh, etc.)

• Demographics of Dubai
• Emirati diaspora