According to Insee figures published at the end of 2024, 6,080,731 people reside in Occitanie as of January 1, 2022. Thanks to a strong migratory surplus, the population continues to increase rapidly, at a rate of + 0.8% per year between 2016 and 2022, significantly more sustained than at the national level (0.3%). Occitanie is still the 4th most populous region in France, behind Ile de France, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Nouvelle Aquitaine, which it could overtake in the coming years as the population of Occitanie increases more quickly. Haute-Garonne is the department of France where the population is growing the fastest, at + 1.3% per year between 2016 and 2022. Hérault is very close, at 1.2% per year. In the eleven other departments of Occitanie, deaths are greater than or equal to births. However, thanks to migrations, their population is maintained or increased. It is almost stable in Lozère and Aveyron. It is progressing moderately in Gers, Lot, Ariège and Hautes-Pyrénées (+0.2% to +0.3% per year) and more significantly in Tarn, Aude, Gard, Tarn- et-Garonne and the Pyrénées-Orientales (from +0.4% to +0.6% per year). Tarn remains the fifth department in Occitanie in terms of population, with 396,168 inhabitants as of January 1, 2022.
50,000 inhabitants in Albi
For the first time, Albi exceeds 50,000 inhabitants (50,605) and is still ahead of Carcassonne (46,429), Sète (45,090) and Alès (45,025). The western part of the department remains as dynamic as ever, with a positive rate of variation for the municipalities of Montans (+1.80%), Lagrave (+1.13%), Marssac (+1.84%) or Saint-Sulpice -la-Pointe (1.34%). The other large municipalities in the department are stabilizing in terms of number of inhabitants. Elsewhere in the region, while the population is declining in Paris and growing slowly in Marseille and Lyon, it is still increasing sharply in Toulouse (+1.2% per year between 2016 and 2022), which remains the 4th city in France with 511,684 inhabitants on January 1, 2022. The increase is even stronger in Montpellier (+1.5% per year), which is the 7th municipality in France with 307,101 inhabitants. At the scale of urban areas, the population is growing even more rapidly in large metropolises. The population of the urban unit of Toulouse, the 4th largest French conurbation with 1,081,726 inhabitants, is increasing by 1.4% per year, the largest increase among French conurbations. The population is increasing even faster in the Montpellier metropolitan area (+1.7% per year). Metropolization and urban sprawl continue over the period 2016-2022. The population increases by 1.1% per year in large urban centers and urban belts. It increases by 0.7% to 0.8% per year on average in intermediate urban centers (Auch, Montauban, Narbonne, etc.), small towns (Castelsarrasin, Limoux, Mende, etc.) and peri-urban rural areas. On the other hand, the population stagnates in non-peri-urban rural areas due to a marked natural deficit. Compared to the previous period, population growth is accelerating only in intermediate urban centers.
