Population growth in the Kempsey Shire between the and the was 1.86 per cent; and in the subsequent five years to the 2011 census was 2.73 per cent.
At the 2011 Census, the proportion of residents in the Kempsey Shire local government area who stated their ancestry as Australian or Anglo-Saxon exceeded 81 per cent of all residents (national average was 65.2 per cent).