Population Statistics
Johnstone
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Renfrewshire · Scotland

Johnstone population

15,930people · latest estimate

Photo: Richard Webb, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By James Burfield, SEO consultant, Bath · Page updated · GeoNames · World Gazetteer 2005

Johnstone has a population of 15,930, making it the 3rd largest place in Renfrewshire. In 2005 the World Gazetteer recorded 15,705, a rise of 1.4% since.

15,705
in 2005
+1.4%
since 2005
#3
of 16 in Renfrewshire

The other populations of Johnstone

The same name covers more than one area, and each has its own figure.

What you meanPopulationSource
The place itself
The populated settlement, roughly the built-up core.
15,930 GeoNames
The place in 2005
The same settlement twenty years earlier.
15,705 World Gazetteer (2005)

Why these differ: which population figure is right? · compare with another place

The 2005 figure is from the World Gazetteer archive and may draw its boundary differently from the current source, so treat the change as indicative. Sources: method.

Year-by-year official estimates for the wider area: Renfrewshire population trends, 2001–2024.

Johnstone in context

5 km
east to Paisley, the nearest larger town
199,218
people live within 10 km
#818
largest of 6,358 UK places
Johnstone in the UK

Distances are straight-line from the settlement's recorded coordinates. The 10 km figure sums the recorded places within that radius, so it describes how built-up the surroundings are rather than people per square kilometre.

The population, measured on a real boundary

What you meanPopulationSource
Johnstone locality
NRS census geography: the continuously built-up Johnstone
16,484Census 2022
Johnstone (GeoNames record)
the figure in this page's heading; boundary unstated
15,930GeoNames

The locality figure is Scotland's Census 2022, summed over the Scottish Postcode Directory's own postcodes for this locality; across all of Scotland that method lands within 601 people of the national census total. Where the two rows disagree, the census locality is the figure to quote.

Food and drink, from the register

CategoryCountPer 10,000
Takeaways (more per head than 83% of Scottish towns)2515.2
Restaurants and cafés148.5
Pubs and bars1810.9
Hotels and B&Bs10.6
Supermarkets and convenience42.4

Registered food establishments in the Johnstone locality, from the Food Standards Agency register. Scotland runs the Food Hygiene Information Scheme (pass or improvement required) rather than England's 0–5 scores, which changes nothing here: these are counts of premises, not judgments of them.

Age profile

MeasureValue
Median age (exact; older than 26% of Scottish towns)42
Under 1515.0%
65 and over18.7%
85 and over2.9%

Scotland's Census 2022 publishes single year of age at output-area level, so this median is exact — the middle resident's actual age, with nothing interpolated. England's published tables stop at five-year bands, which is why English pages label their medians estimated and this one is not. Percentiles compare the 90 Scottish towns of 10,000+ residents with each other, never with England or Wales: their figures are a different census year, and a percentile that quietly mixed the two would be a lie with a percent sign.

Who owns the homes

Measure% of households
Owned, outright or with a mortgage (higher than 10% of Scottish towns)55.2%
  of which owned outright27.3%
Social rented33.3%
Private rented10.3%
Household has no car or van (higher than 91% of Scottish towns)35.5%
Household has two or more22.6%

Scotland's Census 2022, over the 8,048 occupied households of the locality. Shared ownership and shared equity count with mortgaged homes; every share is of households, not residents.

Getting to work

How working residents travelled (census day)Share
Worked mainly from home27.3%
Car or van (of those who travelled)74.2%
Public transport (of those who travelled)15.0%
On foot (of those who travelled)8.1%
Bicycle (of those who travelled)0.7%

Scotland's Census 2022, collected 20 March 2022: past the last legal restrictions, but with home working still far above the old normal, so these are census-day records and mode shares are of the 7,585 employed residents who travelled, never of everyone.

Deprivation

The middle postcode here sits in decile 3 of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, where decile 1 is the most deprived tenth of Scotland's data zones and 10 the least. 60% of the locality's postcodes sit in the most deprived three deciles, 2% in the least deprived three.

SIMD 2020, Scotland's own index — never comparable with England's IMD, and never compared here. Weighted by postcodes rather than people, because the postcode file carries no population, and said so for the same reason the postcode-district pages say it.

Care homes, as Scotland's regulator grades them

Care homes for older people in the locality, by their lowest current grade: 3 good.

The Care Inspectorate's six-point scale (excellent down to unsatisfactory), shown by each service's minimum current grade because that is the Inspectorate's own headline convention. Scotland's regulator and scale, never translated into the CQC's words.

Railway stations

Stations in the locality: Milliken Park (196,074 entries and exits, ORR estimate), Johnstone.

Stations are the DfT's NaPTAN register located by coordinates; passenger figures are the Office of Rail and Road's estimates, and a station shown without one did not match the ORR table by name. Bus stops are not shown for Scottish towns: the national stop register's west-of-Scotland submission is incomplete enough that a count would mislead, and no figure beats a wrong one.

Common questions

What is the population of Johnstone?
The populated place itself holds 15,930 residents. The wider Renfrewshire council area recorded 189,170 in 2024. Each figure describes a different boundary and all are correct; the meanings table on this page says which is which, because a population without its boundary is not an answer.

Go deeper

Population since 2001
Renfrewshire, year by year from ONS estimates

Nearby in Renfrewshire

#PlacePopulation
1Paisley77,270
2Renfrew24,270
3Erskine15,530
4Linwood8,590
5Houston6,420
6Elderslie5,690

All 16 places in Renfrewshire →