Big U.S. cities grew in 2024, reversing covid-era population declines
Populations in major American cities have bounced back from pandemic-induced drops, with New York, Houston and Los Angeles leading the way, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau — a recovery that experts said was fueled primarily by immigration.
The data released Thursday show that 94% of the largest cities grew during the 12-month period ending in June 2024, while the country’s total population ticked up 1%.
That’s the largest yearly increase in nearly a quarter-century. It’s also a sharp turnaround from an anemic 0.16% growth during the year beginning in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — the lowest growth rate in at least 120 years.
“This shows a real bounce-back for a lot of these cities,” said William Frey, a senior demographer at think tank Brookings Institution who analyzed the data.
Steven Martin, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, an economic and social-policy research group, said the nationwide population increase is “the highest we’ve seen in a generation.”
Migration is compelling this rise, the experts said. “The net international immigration ended up spread out across a lot of places,” Martin said. “A lot of cities of a lot of sizes in a lot of regions.”
The Census data showed that 68 of the country’s 72 largest cities grew, most of them reversing a downward population trend earlier this decade. That loss resulted from COVID-19 deaths, people having fewer children and residents fleeing to smaller cities, primarily in the South and West. The latter had the largest impact on major metro areas as people sought safety from the coronavirus and took advantage of liberal work-from-home policies.
Immigration had also plummeted to historic lows in the period ending in 2021 because of pandemic-related restrictions and policies that President Donald Trump enacted during his first term — falling to 376,000 people annually by the end of his first term.
Immigration spiked in the next four years, surpassing 2.7 million people at the end of President Joe Biden’s administration. Matt Erickson, a survey statistician at the Census Bureau, said that increase caused the notable, nationwide population rise captured in the latest Census data.
Conservatives for years have pointed to population decreases as reason to malign Democratic-run cities, from which they argue people are fleeing because of crime and homelessness. (Crime rates have fallen after spiking early in the pandemic. Most people move because of housing or family changes — like marriage or children — not crime, Frey said.)
The uptick in major cities’ populations — and the nation’s — comes after the Census Bureau in 2023 projected that the U.S. population would stop growing and then decline, by the end of the century in what would be a historical first. The bureau estimated the population would peak at nearly 370 million in 2080 before sliding to 366 million in 2100.
Demographers say immigrants are critical to sustaining the labor force, contributing to the tax base and compensating for the growing number of older Americans. Without such an influx, the United States could begin to resemble countries like Germany and Japan, which have among the world’s highest share of people over 65.
“If immigration goes down dramatically, they’re going to pay a price for it” in population loss, Frey said of cities.
Next year’s data — which will detail population in 2025 — will be telling, Martin said. Trump’s immigration policies deter new immigrants from settling in the U.S., which may hinder a further rise in population.
“These cities might not sustain the growth,” Martin said.
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• Tara Bahrampour contributed.