Ethnic groups in Malaysia

Largest cities of Malaysia (2010)
Kuala Lumpur George Town	Rank	City	State	Population	Ipoh Petaling Jaya
	1	Kuala Lumpur	Federal Territories	1,588,750
	2	George Town	Penang	708,127
	3	Ipoh	Perak	657,892
	4	Petaling Jaya	Selangor	613,977
	5	Shah Alam	Selangor	541,306
	6	Johor Bahru	Johor	497,067
	7	Melaka	Melaka	484,885
	8	Kota Kinabalu	Sabah	452,058
	9	Alor Setar	Kedah	405,523
	10	Kuala Terengganu	Terengganu	337,553

The demographics of Malaysia are represented by the multiple ethnic groups that exist in this country. Malaysia's population, according to the 2010 census, is 28,334,000 including non-citizens, which makes it the 41st most populated country in the world. Of these, 5.72 million live in East Malaysia and 22.5 million live in Peninsular Malaysia. The population distribution is uneven, with some 79% of its citizens concentrated in Peninsular Malaysia, which has an area of 131,598 square kilometres (50,810.27 sq mi) constituting under 40% of the total area of Malaysia.

The Malaysian population is growing at a rate of 1.94% per annum as of 2017. According to latest projection of the 2010 census, among the three largest Malaysian groups Malays and Bumiputera fertility rates are at 2.4 children per woman, Chinese 1.4 children per woman, and Indians 1.8 children per woman. Malay fertility rates are 40% higher than Malaysian Indians and 56% higher than Malaysian Chinese. Population projections in 2017 show that the Malays and Bumiputeras comprised a total of 68.8%, Chinese 23.2%, and the Indians 7.0% of the total population. The Chinese population has shrunk from the figures of 1957 when it was about 40% of Malaya, although in absolute numbers they have multiplied around threefold by 2017 in Malaysia (2.4 million in 1957 to 6.6 million in 2017, the later figure include East Malaysia), but dwarfed by the fivefold increase of Malays (from around 3.1 million in 1957 to 15.5 million in 2017).

Censuses were taken in Malaysia in 1970, 1980, 1991, and 2000, with the one in 2000 taking place between 5 and 20 July. The total population is around 28.3 million according to the 2010 census. The population distribution is highly uneven, with some 20 million residents concentrated in Peninsula Malaysia. 74.7% of the population is urban. Due to the rise in labour-intensive industries, Malaysia is estimated to have over 3 million migrant workers, which is about 10% of the Malaysian population. The exact numbers are unknown: there are a million legal foreign workers and perhaps another million unauthorised foreigners. The state of Sabah alone had nearly 25% of its 2.7 million population listed as illegal foreign workers in the last census. Sabah based NGOs estimate that out of the 3 million population, 2 million are illegal immigrants.

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