Immigration Drives Nation’s Population Growth
“Clearly immigration is coming into play — a couple years ago you had people talking about California going off the deep end [with population loss] and now it doesn’t look so deep,” said Brace, president of political consulting firm Election Data Services Inc.
California ranked third in the number of new residents from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024, according to census estimates, with a gain of about 233,000, thanks to both immigration and people moving in from other states. The Golden State was followed by North Carolina (165,000) and New York (130,000). Illinois grew by about 68,000 and Louisiana by about 9,700.
Florida and Texas also were the leaders in percentage change, growing about 2% in that year, followed by Utah (1.8%), South Carolina and Nevada (both up 1.7%), and Idaho and North Carolina (both up 1.5%).
Only three states had population losses for the year, of a few hundred people each: West Virginia, Vermont and Mississippi.
In Texas, the cities of Houston, Austin and Dallas added the most new housing last year — almost 40,000 new units among them — and are likely to be the centers of new population growth, according to a state report in November. Collin County, a Dallas suburb, is also one of the state’s fastest growing areas, with more than 16,000 new housing units added last year and almost 64,000 since 2020, according to the report.
Florida’s recent growth was concentrated in Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie, Miami, Tampa and Orlando, according to a state report this year.
A surplus of births over deaths helped most in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
New York City has built more housing, which helped stem net losses from people moving away, said Jan Vink, a senior extension associate at Cornell University’s Program on Applied Demographics.
That’s encouraging news for the state’s future, Vink said. In November, the university estimated that New York’s population could shrink by as much as 2 million people over the next 25 years because of low fertility rates and aging, unless those losses are offset by new arrivals in the form of immigration or people moving from other states.
Texas, the Carolinas, Florida and Tennessee had the largest numbers of new residents moving in from other states, though the numbers were down in all those states from the previous year as high interest rates and housing prices led more people to postpone moves.
Tim Henderson covers demographics for Stateline. The article originally appeared in Stateline.
