Egypt is the most populous country in the Middle East and the third-most populous on the African continent (after Nigeria and Ethiopia). About 95% of the country's 94.7 million (2012 est. ; estimation for 2016 is 91 million) people live along the banks of the Nile and in the Nile Delta, which fans out north of Cairo; and along the Suez Canal. These regions are among the world's most densely populated, containing an average of over 3,820 persons per square mile (1,540 per km².), as compared to 181 persons per sq. mi. for the country as a whole.
Small communities spread throughout the desert regions of Egypt are clustered around oases and historic trade and transportation routes. The government has tried with mixed success to encourage migration to newly irrigated land reclaimed from the desert. However, the proportion of the population living in rural areas has continued to decrease as people move to the cities in search of employment and a higher standard of living.
According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics and other proponents of demographic structural approach (cliodynamics), the basic problem Egypt has is unemployment driven by a demographic youth bulge: with the number of new people entering the job force at about 4% a year, unemployment in Egypt is almost 10 times as high for college graduates as it is for people who have gone through elementary school, particularly educated urban youth, who comprised most of the people that were seen out in the streets during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. An estimated 75% of Egyptians are under the age of 25 with just 3% over the age of 65, making it one of the most youthful populations in the world.
Egypt has a population of 92 million (2016). According to the OECD/World Bank statistics population growth in Egypt from 1990 to 2008 was 23.7 million and 41%.