Arabs and Berbers together make up about 99.1% of the Moroccan population.A sizeable portion of the population is identified as Haratin and Gnawa (or Gnaoua), black or mixed race descendants of slaves, and Moriscos, European Muslims expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 17th century.

Berbers are the indigenous people and still make up the bulk of the population, although they have been largely Arabized. Morocco is home to more than 20,000 sub-Saharan African immigrants.[78] Morocco's once prominent Jewish minority has decreased significantly since its peak of 265,000 in 1948, declining to around 5,500 today.

Most of foreign residents in Morocco are French or Spanish. Some of them are descendants of colonial settlers, who primarily work for European multinational companies, while others are married to Moroccans or are retirees. Prior to independence, Morocco was home to half a million Europeans.

Morocco has a large diaspora, most of which is located in France, which has reportedly over one million Moroccans of up to the third generation. There are also large Moroccan communities in Spain (about 700,000 Moroccans), The Netherlands (360,000), and Belgium (300,000). Other large communities can be found in Italy, Canada, the United States, and Israel, where Moroccan Jews are thought to constitute the second biggest Jewish ethnic subgroup.

Morocco's official languages are Arabic and Berber.The country's distinctive group of Moroccan Arabic dialects is referred to as Darija. Approximately 89.8% of the whole population can communicate to some degree in Moroccan Arabic. The Berber language is spoken in three dialects (Tarifit, Tashelhit and Central Atlas Tamazight). In 2008, Frédéric Deroche estimated that there were 12 million Berber speakers, making up about 40% of the population.[90] The 2004 population census reported that 28.1% of the population spoke Berber.

French is widely used in governmental institutions, media, mid-size and large companies, international commerce with French-speaking countries, and often in international diplomacy. French is taught as an obligatory language at all schools. In 2010, there were 10,366,000 French-speakers in Morocco, or about 32% of the population.

According to the 2004 census, 2.19 million Moroccans spoke a foreign language other than French.English, while far behind French in terms of number of speakers, is the first foreign language of choice, since French is obligatory, among educated youth and professionals. Spanish is spoken by a small population in the north of the country, especially around the Spanish enclaves Melilla and Ceuta.