The Czech Republic became a democracy through the peaceful “velvet revolution” in 1989. Since then, the country has had a successful transition from communist planning economy to market economy.
Key figures and facts
- Capital: Prague
- Ethnic groups: Czechs 64.3%, Moravians 5%, Slovakians 1.4%, others1.8%, unspecified 27.5% (2011)
- Language: Czech (official) 95.4%, Slovak 1.6%, other 3% (2011)
- Religion: Catholics 10.4%, Protestants 1.1%, second and unspecified 54%, none 34.5% (2011)
- Population: 10 534 000
- Control Form: Republic
- Area: 78 870 km2
- Currency: Czech koruna
- GNP per capita: 34 749 PPP $
- National Day: October 28th
Czech Republic population
The number of residents in the Czech Republic is 10 702 498 (2020). The increase in population from 2019 to 2020 was 0.06 percent. The birth and death rates are 8.9 and 10.9 per 1000 residents respectively (2020). The birth rate is 1.48 children per woman. Life expectancy at birth is 82.4 years for women and 76.3 years for men (2020).
The population is relatively uniform. 95 percent are Czechs and 1.4 percent are Slovakians. There are small minorities of Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Roma.
The largest cities are (number of residents in 2019): the capital Prague (1,280,508), Brno (380,681), Ostrava (289,128), Plzeň (172,441) and Olomouc (100,523). 74.1 percent of the population lives in urban areas.
Foreign workers in the Czech Republic
In 2019, there were 564,000 foreign nationals residing in the Czech Republic. More than half of these were from the following EU countries: Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. From outside the EU, the largest groups came from Ukraine, Russia and Vietnam.
Language
The official language is Czech, which is the mother tongue for 95.4 percent of the population. Linguistic minorities are Slovak – and Roman – speaking. 1.6 percent of the population uses Slovak as their mother tongue. The majority of the German-speaking population was transferred to Germany towards the end of and after World War II.