A national census is taken every 10 years and the last one was held in December 2003. According to the Ministry of National Economy, the population of Oman is 2,340,815. In these 76.1% are Omanis and 23.9% are expartriates. The population growth rate is 1.84%. There are 1.02 Omani males to every female.

The life expectancy of Omani males is 72.2 years and a female is 75.4 years. The average size of Omani household in Muscat is 7.3 members. Ministry of Economy estimates that in mid 2006 the total population was 2.577 million. Of those, 1.844 million were Omanis.

The population has grown from 2.018 million in the 1993 census to 2.340 million in the 2003 census.In Oman, about 50% of the population lives in Muscat and the Batinah coastal plain northwest of the capital; about 200,000 live in the Dhofar (southern) region, and about 30,000 live in the remote

Musandam Peninsula on the Strait of Hormuz. Some 600,000 expatriates live in Oman, most of whom are guest workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, India and the Philippines.