[8] Further Albanian news sources estimated at October 2012 that the real population is closer to the sum of 1,744,237 people who are accounted within all of the health funds of the country.

The provisions of the Ohrid agreement to elevate any minority language if the minority in question is above 20% of the population of any municipality into a co-official language for that municipality has created friction within the government, and between officials of different political and ethnic interests, resulting in the indefinite postponement of the census for almost twenty years until it was finally conducted in 2021.

[13] [14][15] Source: State Statistical Office of the Republic of North Macedonia[16] Population Data for period 2003-2020 was revised by the Statistical Office of the Republic of North Macedonia [17] [26] The process of industrialization and urbanization after the Second World War that caused the population growth to decrease involved the ethnic Macedonians to a greater extent than Muslims.

[28] However, it is unlikely that this high minority TFR has continued since then in North Macedonia, as Balkan fertility elsewhere (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo) has dropped sharply toward the European average.

2 Ashkali: 3,713 or 0.184%, Greeks: 422 or 0.021%, Russians: 368 or 0.018%, Slovenes: 365 or 0.018%, Poles: 162 or 0.008%, Ukrainians: 136 or 0.007%, Germans: 88 or 0.004%, Czechs: 60 or 0.005%, Slovaks: 60 or 0.005%, Jews: 53 or 0.003%, Italians: 46 or 0.002%, Austrians: 35 or 0.002%, Rusyns: 24 or 0.001%, Regionally affiliated: 829 or 0.041%, Non-declared: 404 or 0.02%, Others: 5332 or 0.264% 3 Regionally affiliated: 110 or 0.01%, Non-declared: 450* or 0.02%, Citizens for whom the data are taken from administrative sources, not included directly in the census (without ethnic declaration) 132,260 or 7.20%.