Estimates of the population holding Saudi citizenship have varied widely. Official figures published by the Saudi government suggested a population of 14,870,000 in 1990. In the same year, estimates by one Western source inside the kingdom were as low as 6 million. United Nations estimates were slightly less than the official Saudi figure. Based on the official Saudi figure, at the 1990 rate of growth, a population of 20 million was projected by the year 2000. The 1992 Saudi census suggested an indigenous population of 12.3 million people and a growth rate of 3.3 %.

population of Saudi Arabia is composed mainly of Arabs whose ancestors have lived in the area for many centuries. A substantial minority consists of Yemenis and other Arabs who came to Saudi Arabia after the 1950s because of the economic opportunities the nation afforded. Nomads, known as Bedouins, make up a declining proportion of the population, and the number of settled residents has also decreased. In the early 1990s, 27 % of the people in the nation were nonresident foreign workers.An increasing number of outsiders enter and leave Saudi Arabia. By the late 1980s the around number of foreign workers was between one-fourth and one-fifth of the nation's total population. At first most of these were Arab, such as Yemenis, Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Iraqis. Increasing numbers of non-Arab Muslims such as Pakistanis have been employed, as have large numbers of non-Muslim Koreans and Filipinos who are hired in group contracts for specified times. Among specialized technical workers, most are Europeans and Americans. Also of note is the number of people making the annual pilgrimage hajj to Mecca. By the late 1980s the number approached 2.5 million a year, of whom about half traveled from Arab countries and half from African and Asian countries.