The defined 'locality' of Wishaw had a population of 30,290 in 2016, the 26th largest such place in the country. Along with its neighbours of Hamilton, Bellshill and Motherwell it forms part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation, which as of 2019 had a population of around 1,670,000 (around a third of Scotland's total); however, since 2016 Wishaw, Motherwell and Bellshill have been officially considered separate from the Glasgow 'settlement' due to small gaps in the chain of occupied postcodes used to determine a grouping, and instead form their own North Lanarkshire settlement which itself has the fifth largest population in Scotland of a 124,000.