Demographics of Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is a Canadian province located on the country's southeastern coast. It is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada, and its capital, Halifax, is a major economic centre of the region. Geographically, Nova Scotia is the second smallest province in Canada, with an area of. As of April 2024, it has a population of 1,072,545 people.

Population geography

Population centres

The Halifax population centre is the largest urban area in Nova Scotia. Statistics Canada recognizes a total of 37 population centres in the province.

Municipalities

Nova Scotia has four regional municipalities.

Name

Population

Change

Area

Population
density

Towns

Nova Scotia has 25 towns.

Ethnic origins

Note: the percentages do not necessarily add up to 100% as multiple responses are allowed. Ethnic origins with less than 2% of the responses are not listed.

Language

Knowledge of languages

The question on knowledge of languages allows for multiple responses. The following figures are from the 2021 Canadian Census and the 2016 Canadian Census, and lists languages that were selected by at least 0.5 per cent of respondents.

Mother tongue

The 2021 Canadian census showed a population of 969,383.
Of the 941,105 singular responses to the census question concerning mother tongue the most commonly reported languages were:

Ranking	Language	Population	Percentage
1.	English	851,545	90.48%
2.	French	27,340	2.91%
3.	Arabic	7,960	0.85%
4.	Mandarin	6,730	0.72%
5.	Punjabi	4,550	0.48%
6.	Tagalog	3,240	0.34%
7.	Mi'kmaq	3,145	0.33%
8.	German	3,050	0.32%
9.	Spanish	2,680	0.28%
10.	Korean	2,340	0.25%
11.	Hindi	2,035	0.22%
12.	Malayalam	1,975	0.21%
13.	Russian	1,735	0.18%
14.	Persian	1,435	0.15%
15.	Dutch	1,395	0.15%
16.	Portuguese	1,305	0.14%
17.	Yue (Cantonese)	1,250	0.13%
18.	Gujarati	1,160	0.12%
19.	Urdu	965	0.10%
20.	Vietnamese	950	0.10%
21.	Bengali	890	0.09%
22.	Polish	870	0.09%
23.	Telugu	750	0.08%
24.	Italian	730	0.08%
25.	Greek	710	0.08%
26.	Serbo-Croatian	580	0.06%
27.	Tamil	555	0.06%

Migration

Immigration

The 2021 census reported that immigrants comprise 71,570 persons or 7.5 percent of the total population of Nova Scotia.

Recent immigration

The 2021 Canadian census counted a total of 21,385 people who immigrated to Nova Scotia between 2016 and 2021.

Interprovincial migration

From 1971 to 2011, Nova Scotia had a persistent negative trend in net interprovincial migration. Combined with a declining birth rate, this posed a significant demographic challenge for the province, as its population was projected to decline. The destination for Nova Scotia migrants was most often Ontario, until the turn of the 21st century when Alberta became a more popular destination; New Brunswick ranks as a distant third.

	In-migrants	Out-migrants	Net migration
2008–09	15,467	16,218	−751
2009–10	15,172	14,560	612
2010–11	14,553	14,594	−41
2011–12	14,410	17,276	−2,866
2012–13	12,630	16,147	−3,517
2013–14	13,402	15,973	−2,571
2014–15	13,854	16,165	−2,311
2015–16	15,107	14,353	754
2016–17	15,339	12,500	2,839
2017–18	15,509	12,461	3,048
2018–19	17,324	14,018	3,306

''Source: Statistics Canada''

Employment

As of February 2019, the unemployment rate for the province is 6.4 percent. Halifax Regional Municipality 4.9 percent