Demographics of the United Arab Emirates

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.

Population
The United Arab Emirates experienced a significant population increase in recent years as a result of major economic growth. This led to an influx of workers from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, increasing the population from 4 million in 2004 to roughly 8 million in 2009. As of 2020, foreigners represent 88.1% of the population, the second largest proportion of expats in the world in relation to the nationals after the Vatican. As of 2015, the largest group of non-UAE nationals are South Asian 59.4% (Indians 38.2%, Bangladeshi 9.5%, Pakistani 9.4%, and others 2.3%), Egyptian 10.2%, Filipino 6.1%, and other 12.8%.

Female citizens and non-citizens account for 28% percent of the UAE's population due to the high level of male foreign workers. 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. Population is heavily concentrated to the northeast on the Musandam Peninsula. The three largest Emirates (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah), are home to nearly 85% of the population.

The 2022 population of the UAE stands at 9.4 million, of which 69% of the population is male and 31% of the population is female. The population density of the Emirates has reached a record 114 per km2.

Education and employment
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.

UN prospects
Source: United National World Population Prospects

Life expectancy


Source: UN World Population Prospects

Ethnic groups
The UAE National Bureau of Statistics does not publish demographic data in relation to any nationality. The figures listed in the table below are estimates provided by each country's embassy.

Source: United Arab Emirates Population Statistics

 *The figures for the countries cannot be directly sourced to embassy statements.

The UAE population is made of Emirati nationals (11.6%), other Arab and Iranian nationalities (18%), South Asian nationalities (59%) and other expatriate nationalities (includes Westerners, East Asians and Africans) at 12%).

Languages


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.

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

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 ), Hindi–Urdu, Marathi, Persian, Cebuano, Pashto (144,000 speakers in the UAE ), Kannada, Bengali (337,000 speakers in the UAE ), Punjabi (201,000 speakers in the UAE ), Odia, Telugu, Baluchi and Southern Baluchi (379,000 speakers in the UAE ), Sinhala (121,000 speakers in the UAE ), Russian, Ukrainian, Somali, Tagalog (303,000 speakers in the UAE ), Nepali, Mandarin, Tamil (455,000 speakers in the UAE ), Spanish, Italian and Greek.

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