Pew Research Center tabulations of the 2021 American Community Survey; Chart: Axios Visuals
About 190,000 Arabic speakers live in Metro Detroit — or about 13% of all Arabic speakers in the U.S. and 91% of those in Michigan, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
Why it matters: The number of Americans speaking Arabic is up from 215,000 in 1980 to 1.4 million in 2021.
- It's now the seventh-most common non-English language spoken at home.
- More Americans speak Arabic than German and Italian.
Zoom in: The Detroit metro has the country's largest concentration of Arabic speakers, with 4.7% of the population age 5 and older speaking Arabic at home.
- Only five other metro areas with more than 250,000 people have Arabic-speaking populations that exceed 1% of the total population.
Between the lines: Decades of immigration to cities like Dearborn, Hamtramck, Warren, Sterling Heights and Troy have established Arabic-speaking networks and organizations like the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, which work to assist Metro Detroit residents.
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