Expat numbers surge to 68.3% of Kuwait’s population

KUWAIT: The total number of non-Kuwaiti residents in Kuwait has witnessed a significant increase, constituting 68.3 percent of the total population, as revealed by data from the Public Authority for Civil Information. The population growth rate for the year 2023 reached its highest level since 2005, surpassing the recorded rate in 2022.

The number of citizens increased by 1.9 percent to reach 1.53 million, showing a steady but relatively slow growth compared to the average annual growth of 2.5 percent from 2010 to 2019. The working-age population continues to rise, currently accounting for 62.7 percent of the total population, with a large portion being individuals under 15 years old (32.3 percent), who will gradually enter the labor market in the coming years. Additionally, the percentage of elderly citizens has increased significantly (currently at 4.9 percent), aligning with trends in many emerging and advanced economies.

Simultaneously, the non-Kuwaiti population saw another sharp increase of 11 percent, reaching around 3.29 million, narrowing the gap with pre-pandemic levels (-1.5% compared to the level in 2019). Currently, expatriates constitute 68.3 percent of the total population, a slight increase from the 66.1 percent recorded at the end of 2021 but still lower than the pre-pandemic level of 70 percent.

A significant portion of the rise in the non-Kuwaiti workforce is attributed to the increase in domestic workers, which saw a 16 percent annual increase to approximately 811,000 workers, constituting around 25 percent of the total expatriate population compared to 22 percent at the end of 2019. Over the past 18 months, the total population has remained around 9 percent lower than the projected level of 5.3 million if the pre-pandemic population growth trend had continued.