The U.S. Census Bureau released its annual population estimates on Tuesday, showing the nation’s population grew by about 2.5 million people in 2014 and is expected to continue growing in 2015, but which cities saw the biggest increases and declines?
With the United States Census Bureau preparing to report its latest population data for the country, we wanted to make sure everyone knew where the population was moving to, and from, in 2015. With a new report to be released on March 19th, we’ve collected information from the US Census Bureau, the places reporting gains and losses to their populations, and even the cities that are growing right now.
If you’re unfamiliar with the census, it’s a survey of every resident in a given area (in the U.S., it’s conducted every 10 years) that the government uses to enumerate the people there and gather information on demographics and economics. It’s also a great resource for information on neighborhood change.. Read more about is 2020 census data available and let us know what you think.
Here’s what you should be aware of:
Since the previous census, Phoenix has surpassed Philadelphia to become the fifth-largest city in the United States. Credit… The New York Times’ Juan Arredondo
Phoenix’s blistering growth rate was verified by census data.
Since the previous census, Arizona’s desert capital has grown at the quickest pace among America’s largest cities, leapfrogging Philadelphia to become the country’s fifth-largest metropolis.
According to the Census Bureau, Phoenix’s population increased by 11.2 percent from 1.4 million in 2010 to 1.6 million in 2020.
The rise has been driven not just by immigration and sun-seeking seniors, but also by the entrance of IT firms and middle-class families seeking more affordable homes from California and other more costly areas of the nation.
The Phoenix metro area has continued to expand into the desert, with outlying communities like Buckeye expanding by almost 80% in the last decade. Phoenix, on the other hand, is rising up, with new condo buildings and rowhouses springing up all over the city.
All of this development has sparked concerns about how the area will provide adequate water for all of the new people and their yards as severe droughts and hotter summers deplete rivers and reservoirs.
The growth of the population in Phoenix and Maricopa County has resulted in a political change. Last November, President Biden won Arizona’s 11 electoral votes by a razor-thin margin, edging out a once-reliable Republican presidential state.
At June, crowds gathered in Times Square in Midtown Manhattan. Credit… The New York Times’ Joshua Bright
Since 2010, the population of New York City has increased by approximately 629,000 people, or almost 8%, to 8.8 million, confounding expectations that it would decrease.
“The Big Apple has become much larger!” Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed his gratitude for the rise on Twitter, citing his administration’s investments in prekindergarten programs, safe streets, and working families as reasons for the increase.
However, municipal authorities said that the rise was due in part to a more accurate census.
In recent years, the Department of City Planning in New York, which provides data to the Census Bureau, has added 265,000 housing units to the bureau’s list, including both “hard to locate” and freshly built units.
According to Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s senior demographer, “this enabled the Census Bureau to count half a million individuals that they would have otherwise overlooked.” “They knew precisely where to go since we informed them.”
He described the increase in population as a “shot in the arm” for a city still recovering from the epidemic and a sign of its resilience. He said that the city was flourishing despite the possibility of population loss during the epidemic.
He stated, “The downfall of New York City has been predicted many times – wrongly.” “I recognize that this is mostly a pre-Covid population, but adding over 600,000 people is equivalent to adding the whole population of Miami. It’s enormous.”
Each of the city’s five boroughs increased in population, with Brooklyn and Queens leading the way. The population of the Bronx hit a new high of 1.47 million people, exceeding the previous peak of 1970. With 2.74 million residents, Brooklyn fell only 2,000 people short of its 1950 high. New York City now accounts for almost 44 percent of the state’s overall population, according to the latest census statistics.
The city’s population seemed to be decreasing in recent years, according to population estimates. (The population increased quickly in the first part of the decade, but started to decrease after 2016.) According to the Department of City Planning, such projections were most likely based on erroneous data.
What does the future hold for the city of New York? In our newest virtual event for subscribers, Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams, writer Jeremy O. Harris, and chef Marcus Samuelsson will join Times journalists to discuss what the future holds for New York and other American cities.
Residents line dance at The Villages, Florida’s Lake Sumter Landing Market Square in 2020. Credit… The New York Times’ Eve Edelheit
MIAMI, Florida — Despite a slowdown of general population growth in the United States, The Villages, a vast master planned community in Central Florida, remained the fastest-growing metropolitan region over the past decade, according to census statistics published Thursday.
The population of the region, which is approximately a 45-minute drive from Orlando, has increased by 39 percent since 2010 — from around 93,000 to about 130,000 people. A continuous stream of retirees attracted by Florida’s year-round warm weather, beaches, and endless golfing fuelled the development. For decades, the community, which consists of a mix of houses and towns, has been among the fastest-growing metropolitan cities.
Its most recent development surge contributed to Florida’s total population increase, which resulted in the creation of a Congressional seat.
Built in the 1960s as a collection of mail-order tracts, The Villages exploded in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s as it grew to incorporate large-scale eating, shopping, and other leisure activities, transforming into a palm-lined, self-contained home for seniors embarking on their next chapter.
The Villages are located in three counties, with the most of them being in Sumter County. There are three ZIP codes in the area, as well as several town squares, movie theaters, grocery shops, and libraries.
The Villages, which is largely white and conservative, has been a regular campaign destination for Republican politicians over the years.
In 2018, a storage facility at the Planters Cotton Oil Mill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was decommissioned. Credit… Getty Images/Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency
For civic leaders in Pine Bluff, Ark., the terrible news included in Thursday’s latest census statistics came as no surprise: Between 2010 and 2020, their metro region lost 12.5 percent of its population, the greatest percentage loss of any metro area during that time span.
The population of the city is currently about 87,500, down from slightly over 100,000 a decade ago.
For years, though, Pine Bluff residents have felt a tangible sense of loss. A 2016 New York Times article detailed an ill-fated attempt to demolish hundreds of dilapidated, abandoned houses using prisoners and parolees.
Pine Bluff, which is surrounded by fields of grains, beans, peas, and cotton, exemplifies the struggles that many smaller American hub cities have faced in recent decades, first with the mechanization of agriculture, which reduced the need for field hands, and then with foreign competition and outsourcing, which has repeatedly harmed Pine Bluff’s manufacturing base.
These two factors have sent Pine Bluff into a spiral from which it has yet to recover. In an interview on Thursday, State Representative Vivian Flowers, who represents the region, said, “The economy continued to shift, students continued to leave.” “As a result, your tax base diminishes, and you lose the capacity to deal with infrastructure and beautify the city.”
The state recently intervened to take over two of the area’s underperforming local education systems (the districts were recently combined). In recent years, the city has also gained a reputation for having an alarmingly high murder rate.
A local TV news station claimed in early June that six slayings in the region happened in a six-day period.
Pine Bluff City Council member Joni Alexander said Thursday that the region has failed to tap into some of the hot industries driving development in other metro areas, such as technology and health care.
She mentioned the closing of a small auto-parts factory that had been in existence since the early 1980s, which was announced in July. Ms. Alexander said, “We’re dealing with a lot of stuff.”
April in Austin. Some areas, such as Austin, Texas’s state capital, and its suburbs, have struggled to keep up with the demand for new houses and infrastructure to suit their new neighbors. Credit… The New York Times’ Tamir Kalifa
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Interstate 35 in Texas, which connects San Antonio and Austin, used to go through a scattering of smaller towns and a lot of open countryside. Subdivisions, commercial growth, and soul-crushing traffic have now coalesced into a single mass of people.
On Thursday, the United States Census Bureau published its decennial numbers, confirming what has long been obvious across that region of Central and South Texas: There were a lot of new folks moving in.
Travis Mitchell, the mayor of Kyle, a bedroom town south of Austin that is one of the interstate’s fast-growing communities, said, “It’s sort of mind-blowing.” “Extreme difficulties come with growth.”
New Braunfels, a suburb north of San Antonio, was singled out by Census authorities as an example of a city situated just outside major urban centers that had seen some of the most dramatic growth, with its population increasing by at least 44 percent. In Texas, there were two more: McKinney, just outside of Dallas, and Conroe, which had been swallowed up by the enormous Houston metropolitan region.
In some respects, the state’s economic and other development has represented the promise of opportunity that has been part of the state’s sales pitch to attract outsiders, especially from California and New York.
It has, however, come with painful growing pains, as continuous traffic jams have highlighted the pressure on infrastructure and rising housing prices have forced longstanding inhabitants to relocate.
The issue had become so bad that Austin recruited a community displacement prevention officer in April, after city authorities realized that Black and Hispanic citizens had been among the worst hit by gentrification’s effects.
The state’s urban centers, such as Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth, as well as the Midland and Odessa areas of West Texas’ Permian Basin, saw population growth. More over 200,000 new inhabitants moved to Houston, an increase of almost 10%.
A significant inflow of Hispanic and African Americans has fuelled the city’s growth. In Texas, the Latino population was just 0.4 percentage points smaller than the Anglo population, which is now a minority among nonwhite populations.
But, according to census authorities, growth was not uniform throughout Texas, as many other regions of the large state – rural areas and smaller towns — experienced population declines.
Questions have been raised regarding how the state’s political fortunes might be affected as a result of the development.
Democrats have been wooing the newcomers as possible new voters, and the shift in demography has bolstered their confidence. They’ve been boosted by the party’s recent wins in states like Georgia and Arizona, where demographic changes have coincided with increased electoral viability in formerly Republican-dominated states.
On a statewide level, though, Republicans retain a strong hold on power. New seats in Congress will be created as a result of the census results. However, this has set the scene for a contentious redistricting process later this year.
Near Watford City, North Dakota is a state in North America., in 2018, pumpjacks and oil storage tanks. Credit… The New York Times/Jim Wilson
According to Census Bureau statistics, McKenzie County in western North Dakota expanded at the highest pace of any American county in the last decade, as the Bakken oil boom drew thousands of employees and more than quadrupled the population.
The region’s housing, schools, and infrastructure were placed under strain by the region’s rapid development, particularly early in the decade. Since 2010, the mainly rural county’s population has increased by 131%, from 6,400 to 14,700 people.
Williston is located in Williams County, which increased by almost 83 percent to nearly 41,000 people from approximately 22,400 in 2010.
The influx of new inhabitants in western North Dakota sparked a boom in construction, with new hotels, restaurants, and even an airport springing up.
North Dakota’s population increased at one of the fastest rates of any state in the past decade, and the increase was not limited to the oil fields. Cass County, which contains Fargo, increased by 23% to almost 185,000 people in the eastern portion of the state. Grand Forks County’s population increased by 9% to 73,000 people.
Despite this, North Dakota remains one of the country’s least populated states, with growth falling short of earning the state a second congressional district.
The surge of immigrants in North Dakota defies decades of patterns on the rural Great Plains, where several counties peaked in population before the Dust Bowl and have been shedding inhabitants for almost a century.
During the 2018 midterm elections, a voting site at Hull Middle School in Duluth, Georgia, an increasingly diverse town north of Atlanta. Credit… The New York Times’ Audra Melton
According to census statistics published on Thursday, Georgia, a state where white supremacy was entrenched in law and tradition for decades, has witnessed a significant increase in ethnic and racial diversity in the past decade, a development that is already having a profound impact on the state’s and nation’s politics.
Whites were expected to become a minority in Georgia over the next five years, according to census statistics. They aren’t quite there yet, however. According to the latest statistics, white people now make up 51.9 percent of the population, down from 59.7% in 2010.
In the past several decades, African Americans’ proportion of the population has risen from 31.5 percent to 33 percent, while Hispanics’ share of the population has risen from 8.8 percent to 10.5 percent. In addition, the number of Asians in the state increased by almost 200,000, a 54.8 percent rise. Asians currently account for 5.8% of the state’s population.
For years, long-time Georgians have sensed a shift in the tastes of daily life, taking for granted that excellent tlayudas can be found in Jonesboro and serious bibimbap can be found in Columbus.
However, most Georgia political observers believe that these demographic shifts also contribute to the Democratic Party’s renewed competitiveness in the state, where Joe Biden narrowly defeated former President Donald J. Trump in November and where two Democratic Senate candidates, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, won stunning upset victories over their Republican opponents.
Democrats have been trying to build a multicultural coalition that takes advantage of populous and diversifying areas like suburban Gwinnett County, which grew as whites fled the Atlanta city core, while Republicans tried to rally their base by raising concerns about illegal immigration and noncitizen voting.
However, as overt racial animosity faded in areas like Gwinnett, the promise of excellent schools and abundant housing stock became a draw for people of all colors. In 1970, the county was more than 90% white, but it is currently 35.5 percent white.
And the county, which had been a staunch Republican bastion for decades, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
During the 55th Head of the Charles Regatta in October 2019, a glimpse of the Boston skyline. Credit… Getty Images/Maddie Meyer
In previous census cycles, Boston’s population was declining, with young people moving to the south and west in pursuit of better employment and less expensive homes.
That is no longer the case. Boston gained 9.3 percent between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, a reversal for the city and almost twice the growth rate in Massachusetts statewide, according to census statistics published on Thursday. According to the census, the city currently has a population of 675,647 people.
As the city expanded, the percentage of people who identified as white decreased, from 47 percent in 2010 to 44.5 percent now. The percentage of Black inhabitants has remained constant, at 24.4 percent in 2010 and 25.2 percent today; the percentage of Asians has increased from 8.4 to 9.7 percent; and the percentage of Hispanics has increased from 17.5 to 19.8 percent.
This summer, the changing demographics are playing out in city politics, which was formerly driven by local and ethnic conflicts.
Boston’s City Council is now controlled by women and people of color, and the four front-runners in this fall’s mayoral race are all women of color.
“In terms of political representation, we’re catching up,” said Paul Watanabe, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
The increase in population coincides with a housing scarcity that threatens to drive working families out of areas where they have lived for generations. Immigration continues to be a major source of population increase in Massachusetts, particularly in gateway cities where housing is more cheap.
June on Olvera Street in Los Angeles is a city in California.. The retail area in downtown Los Angeles has long been a popular tourist attraction and a reminder of the state’s early Mexican connections. Credit… Associated Press/Jae C. Hong
According to recently published statistics from the US Census Bureau, California’s Hispanic population surpassed that of the state’s white population in 2020.
In the 2020 poll, more than 39 percent of Californians said they were Hispanic or Latino, compared to almost 35 percent of the state’s approximately 40 million people who said they were white and not Hispanic.
According to a Census Bureau statistic known as a diversity index, which assesses the likelihood that two randomly selected people would be from different racial or cultural origins, California was also the nation’s second most diverse state, behind only Hawaii.
The change in California’s demographics confirms the state’s status as a forerunner of the nation’s future — more varied and multiracial, but less characterized by rapid population increase.
The Census Bureau published statistics earlier this year that confirmed what many analysts predicted: California would lose a congressional seat for the first time in its history because it did not expand as quickly as other populous states, such as Texas, in the previous decade.
Furthermore, official figures published in May revealed that California’s population had decreased during the previous year, a tiny but significant 0.46 percent decrease.
Demographers at the time ascribed the decrease to a combination of factors, including decreasing birthrates and immigration, as well as the fatal toll of the coronavirus epidemic.
Nonetheless, the trends have generated heated discussion and existential concern among Californians about rising housing prices, which have put many areas of the state out of reach for those working in lower-paying professions such as food service, logistics, and manufacturing.
As a consequence, population growth in California’s major cities has slowed as people relocate to less costly areas farther inland.
Los Angeles County, for example, increased by just 2% in the past decade, despite being the country’s most populated, with more than 10 million people, according to the census.
In comparison, some of the state’s fastest-growing counties, such as Placer County in Sacramento, expanded by more than 16 percent.
Many of the counties that are growing in population are on the outskirts of wilderness and rural regions, making them more vulnerable to wildfires that are becoming more catastrophic.
According to experts, the greater expense of living in coastal towns has also forced many members of firmly established communities of color to relocate.
According to demographers, black Californians have been displaced from places such as Oakland and Los Angeles, or have migrated out of the state altogether.
According to the census, the Black population in Alameda County, which includes Oakland, has dropped by 7.5 percent over the last decade. People who identified as Black or African American made up 7.1 percent of the state’s population in year, down from 7.2 percent in 2010.
In May, the Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica, Calif. California was one of the states with the fastest-growing populations. Credit… Associated Press/Damian Dovarganes
Here are some of the major population lines as we dig through the specifics of the new 2020 census data.
In decreasing order, the states with the greatest population growth (defined as the total number of people gained since 2010) were:
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Texas
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Florida
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California
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Georgia
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Washington
In decreasing order, the states with the highest population growth (measured as a percentage increase since 2010) were:
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Utah
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Idaho
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Texas
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North Dakota
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Nevada
The following cities had the fastest population growth:
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The Villages is a community in the state of Florida.
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Texas (Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown)
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Utah’s St. George
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Greeley, Colorado is a city in the state of Colorado.
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Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and North Myrtle Beach, North Carolina
The fastest-growing micropolitan regions — those based on a city or other urban area with less than 50,000 inhabitants — were:
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Williston, North Dakota
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N.D. Dickinson, N.D. Dickinson, N.D. Dickinson
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Bozeman is a town in Montana.
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Idaho’s Rexburg
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Heber, Utah is a town in Utah.
The cities with the greatest population growth, listed alphabetically by state rather than by amount of increase, were:
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Phoenix
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Los Angeles
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Denver
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Jacksonville, Florida is a city in Florida.
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New York
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Charlotte, North Carolina
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Columbus, Ohio is a city in Ohio.
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Oklahoma City is a city in Oklahoma.
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Texas cities include Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio.
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Seattle
In alphabetical order by state, the cities with the fastest population increase were:
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Ariz. cities of Buckeye and Goodyear
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Irvine is a city in the state of California.
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Meridian is a city in Idaho.
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Texas cities Conroe, Frisco, McKinney, and New Braunfels
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South Jordan is a town in the state of Utah.
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Kent, Washington
Pine Bluff, Ark., and Danville, Ill., on the other hand, had the fastest population decreases. Only West Virginia, Mississippi, and Illinois lost population in the state.
In the year 2020, a mural will be installed in the community of Sanborn, Iowa. Iowa is a mostly rural and white state. Credit… Getty Images/Spencer Platt
New Census Bureau statistics revealed a more diverse and urbanized country than many experts had predicted, fueling Democratic expectations — and Republican concerns — that broad demographic changes would eventually result in a new progressive majority.
While the statistics seemed to boost Democratic expectations, it also marked the start of a crucial phase of congressional redistricting, which is anticipated to benefit Republicans.
As the number of non-Hispanic white people in the United States decreased for the first time, their proportion of the population fell to 57.8%, almost two points lower than anticipated. The population of vast swaths of mainly white rural America has been declining.
The fresh statistics published on Thursday seemed to bode well for Democrats, who had worried that the coronavirus epidemic and the Trump administration’s attempt to inquire about citizenship status would result in a significant undercounting of Latino and urban voters.
While it’s still conceivable that the census undercounted Hispanics, the topline figures didn’t show any apparent signs of a problem with the count. The proportion of Hispanics in the population was as expected. New York City, which was once in the heart of the epidemic, outperformed pre-census predictions by a large margin.
For more than a decade, the possibility that the declining non-Hispanic, white population would help progressives gain a permanent electoral advantage has loomed over American politics, inflaming conservative fears of immigration and even motivating a wave of new laws aimed at restricting voting access.
Despite this, the country’s increasing ethnic diversity has had little impact on Washington’s power balance. Despite the census’s apparently positive demographic picture, the 2020 election produced yet another tightly split result: a 50-50 Senate, one of the closest presidential elections in history, and a House majority so thin that the statistics Democrats are praising today may erase it.
While Democratic-leaning voting organizations are becoming more popular, the country’s political center of gravity continues to move to the historically Republican Sun Belt, where Republicans dominate the redistricting process in states that gained congressional seats in the spring reapportionment.
The data, which includes precise population counts and demographic data for every neighborhood in the nation, will kick off a period of intensive new electoral mapmaking, with the potential to decide control of Congress and state legislatures throughout the country in next year’s midterm election.
Republicans are projected to win five seats through redistricting alone, since they have greater authority to alter boundaries than Democrats.
Last year, workers handed out census brochures during a Vietnamese New Year Festival in Austin, Texas. Credit… The New York Times salutes Nakamura.
The Census Bureau announced on Thursday that the United States has become substantially more diverse over the last decade, as the numbers of individuals who identify as Hispanic and Asian have risen, and the number of people who say they are more than one race has increased.
Over the last decade, population growth has slowed significantly. According to the statistics, the first racial and ethnic breakdown from the 2020 census, the growth that did occur — an increase of approximately 23 million people — was completely made up of individuals who identified as Hispanic, Asian, Black, and more than one race.
For the first time in history, the white population of the United States has decreased during the course of the decade. Since the 1960s, when the United States opened up more extensively to immigration from outside Europe, the number of people who identify as white on census forms has decreased as a percentage of the total population.
The decline was fueled in part by the white population’s aging and a significant decrease in the birthrate.
People who classified as more than one race had the greatest rise, a category that first appeared on census forms 20 years ago and is currently the fastest growing racial and ethnic group. That population increased by more than a factor of two.
Tomás Jiménez, a sociologist at Stanford who studies immigration, integration, and social mobility, said, “We are in a strange demographic time.” “We have more options than ever before when it comes to our unique identities and how we portray them. In comparison to earlier eras, we can infer much less about who someone is simply on the boxes they check.”
The census’s first image of changes in the American population below the state level was released on Thursday.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix are currently the country’s top five biggest cities. Phoenix, which was the fastest growing of the top 20 biggest cities, has displaced Philadelphia as the sixth largest city. Its population increased by 11.2%.
The Villages, a Florida retirement community, is the country’s fastest expanding metropolitan region. McKenzie County, North Dakota, grew at the quickest rate during the last decade. Its population increased by more than a factor of two.
The census revealed a continuing demographic movement away from the traditional industrial belt, which stretches from New York to Illinois, and toward Sun Belt states such as Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, a trend that will have an impact on the political landscape.
Since the previous decennial census in 2010, the data provided the most comprehensive picture of race in America. Redistricting, a procedure in which state legislatures redraw voting boundaries based on changes in their states’ demographics, is also dependent on the counts.
The rise in the number of Asian and Hispanic Americans was less dramatic than in previous decades, but still much greater than the rise in the number of Americans who ticked the white or black box.
According to the latest statistics, Hispanics contributed for almost half of the country’s growth during the last decade, increasing by approximately 23%. The Asian population increased faster than anticipated, by approximately 36%, accounting for almost a quarter of the country’s overall population.
Nearly one-quarter of all Americans now identify as Hispanic or Asian. The Black population increased by 6%, accounting for roughly a tenth of the country’s growth. Americans who classified as non-Hispanic and multi-racial grew the quickest, from 6 million to 13.5 million.
And, in what seems to be a significant change in how Hispanics view their racial identity, one-third of Hispanics identified being multiracial, up from only 6% in 2010. That implies Hispanics are now almost twice as likely as whites to identify as mixed.
Hispanic origin is a separate category from race and is classified as an ethnicity. Hispanics, on the other hand, may tick racial boxes.
For decades, the United States has been becoming increasingly diverse, but the pace has lately increased. In the 1970s, non-Hispanic white individuals accounted for 46% of population growth, 36% in the 1980s, 20% in the 1990s, but just 8% of growth in the first decade of this century and nil in the 2010s.
The Brookings Institution’s chief demographer, William Frey, stated, “This is a crucial time for the nation in terms of its diversity.” “A segment of our population is aging and expanding slowly. People of race, on the other hand, are younger and grow at a faster rate. They are assisting in propelling us farther towards a century in which diversity will be the hallmark of our demographics.”
The date has been changed to August 12, 2021.
The rate of decrease of the non-Hispanic white population after 2010 was erroneously stated in a previous version of this article. It was 2.6 percent, not 8.6 percent, as previously stated. It also stated Phoenix’s growth rate inaccurately. It increased by 11.2 percent rather than 9.4 percent.
In April, construction cranes swooped down over downtown Austin, Texas, near the State Capitol. Credit… Associated Press/Eric Gay
The continuous expansion of metropolitan regions at the cost of large, rural swathes of the nation was one of the most striking themes in the statistics published by the Census Bureau on Thursday.
Although there were exceptions — the population of a rural county in North Dakota surged during an oil boom, for example – the United States’ development was largely driven by surges in major cities and metropolitan regions.
Despite the fact that the country’s overall population grew 7.4% during the past decade, to 331.4 million, population numbers decreased in more than half of the country’s counties.
Almost every county in Illinois declined, making it one of just three states in the country to lose population while its biggest metropolis, Chicago, grew.
Texas’ massive population gain — the greatest of any state — was concentrated in urban regions like Houston, Austin, and Dallas-Fort Worth, while more rural counties in West Texas and the Texas Panhandle lost inhabitants.
New York would have lost two seats in Congress if it weren’t for strong growth in New York City, which compensated losses in other areas of the state. The city currently has approximately 44 percent of the population in the state.
In 2020, 86 percent of Americans resided in metropolitan regions, while 8% lived in “micropolitan” places, which are cities or other population centers with less than 50,000 but more than 10,000 residents. Only 6% of the population of the United States lives in rural areas.
The coming national battle over congressional and state legislative redistricting will take place at a breakneck speed. Credit… The New York Times’ Tom Brenner
With control of Congress hanging in the balance and gerrymandering threatening to lock in quasi-permanent majorities in state legislatures across the country, the Census Bureau released long-awaited district-level results on Thursday, kicking off what is expected to be the most bruising, litigious, and consequential redistricting battle in a generation.
With Democrats holding a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives, control of the chamber in 2022 could be decided solely by congressional redistricting: Republican-leaning states like Texas and Florida are reapportioning seats, and GOP-controlled state legislatures will have far more control over the redistricting process, allowing them to draw more maps than Democrats.
If history is any guide, an intense process of mapmaking, political wrangling, well-funded opinion-shaping, and ornery public feedback will unfold in statehouses, courthouses, on the air, and even on the streets in regions of special contention in a matter of days, as soon as state officials can crunch census data files into more modern formats.
The redistricting battle comes during one of the longest-running attacks on voting rights since the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act, an endeavor that has made the ability to vote one of the most contentious topics in American politics. And redistricting will go place this fall without one of the most important safeguards established by the Voting Rights Act: the preclearance process, which guaranteed supervision of states with a history of discrimination. In a 2013 decision, the Supreme Court essentially nullified that rule, meaning it may take litigation — and years — to compel redrawing of districts that diminish minority areas’ voting strength.
The impending national battle over congressional and state legislative maps will likewise take place at a breakneck pace. Because of pandemic-related delays, the required census data is coming months later than usual, forcing state legislatures, independent commissioners, and others in charge of creating new maps to work very fast to create new districts before primary elections begin next year.
Even before any maps were created, the rushed timetable resulted in several preemptive lawsuits, mainly brought by Democrats. Tens of millions of dollars have been put aside by the two parties and associated outside organizations to pay for legal challenges.
“This year, redistricting is like an amplified battle for both parties,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “People will do whatever it takes.”
Demonstrators protested a proposal to include a citizenship question in the 2020 Census at the United States Supreme Court in 2019. Credit… Getty Images/Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse
Perhaps no census has been more complicated than the one that led to the statistics published on Thursday, a count that was hampered by a White House that wanted to use it as a weapon to permanently alter the balance of national political power.
Those crises might theoretically have left large gaps in the data collected by the Census Bureau last year, as some individuals refused to be counted and others refused to give the government all it needed to know. It won’t be known how large those holes are or how they were filled until the bureau releases the findings of its own quality assessment later this year.
However, one long-time specialist advises caution. In an interview, Steve Jost, a census consultant and former bureau employee, stated, “Early results on every census lead people to rush to conclusions that may not be substantiated by subsequent study.”
Mr. Jost believes that in this instance, the data may even indicate that a census that many anticipated to be spectacularly wrong was really quite accurate.
There was a lot to be concerned about. Despite a constitutional obligation to include everyone, the Trump administration made a controversial attempt to omit millions of individuals residing in the county without permission from the census count.
It wasn’t until July 2020 that it was revealed why: President Donald J. Trump intended to remove them from population totals used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives, resulting in a reapportionment base that was older, whiter, and probably more Republican.
Although the attempt failed, one early sign indicates that the anti-immigrant movement frightened certain ethnic groups: The proportion of households refusing to answer at least one of the nine questions on the 2020 census form was much higher than in the 2010 census. And race and ethnicity questions were the ones that were most likely to be skipped.
Early findings, on the other hand, indicate a far greater migration to cities than many predicted, as well as a significant increase in the Hispanic population, all of which imply that ethnic and racial groupings were not as discouraged as previously believed.
Experts were particularly concerned when the coronavirus shut down the country in April 2020, just as the national tally was about to begin. The census’ last phase, in which door-knockers hunted down the millions of people who had not willingly filled out a form, was postponed until fall, during hurricane season, when hurricanes pounded most of the South. Residents refused to open their doors to census takers because they were afraid of becoming ill; census takers were tougher to recruit and resigned more often because they were afraid of getting sick. In a last-ditch effort, the bureau actually flew its finest door-knockers into the most difficult-to-count areas, a logistical maneuver akin to an army battle.
Many experts were concerned that the bureau would miss counting so many families that it would have to make statistical informed estimates about who lived in large swathes of certain regions. However, since the bureau combed through federal data to determine who was in those missing homes, those estimates, known as count imputations, are fewer than in 2010.
In principle, assuming the data are reliable, this might result in a more accurate census than anybody anticipated. That won’t be known until the bureau’s report card is out. Meanwhile, one expert argues that people should be grateful that a good count took place at all in a year marked by unprecedented social and political change.
“Just collecting the data and getting back on track is a significant achievement,” said Margo J. Anderson, a historian and census specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
In May 2020, downtown Los Angeles will be transformed. After the 2020 census showed a decrease in population growth, California lost a congressional seat. Credit… The New York Times’ Philip Cheung
The census report comes on the heels of previous statistics indicating that the population of the United States increased at the second-slowest pace since the government began counting in 1790, a stunning deceleration fueled by a slowdown in immigration and a decreasing birthrate.
In April, the bureau reported changes to the country’s political map: the long-running trend of the South and West gaining population — and congressional representation — at the expense of the Northeast and Midwest continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida one, while New York and Ohio each lost one. For the first time in history, California, which has long been a leader in population growth, has lost a seat.
The migration of people to the Sun Belt has been going on for years, but its political significance is shifting. Sun Belt wins in the past have often translated into inevitable Electoral College victories for Republicans. The calculus has become increasingly difficult.
While Donald J. Trump won Utah, Idaho, Texas, and North Dakota, Vice President Joe Biden won four of the following five states on the list: Nevada, Colorado, Washington, and Arizona.
Regardless of which party benefits in the end, the findings appear to confirm a trend in American life: the South and West are becoming increasingly the centers of population and power, leapfrogging the Northeast and Midwest, whose populations have remained stagnant since a peak in the early twentieth century.
Americans have been lured away from failing small towns in high-cost, cold-weather regions by the booming economy of Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina. In New York, 48 of the state’s 62 counties are expected to lose population. In Illinois, where a congressional seat was also lost, 93 of the state’s 102 counties are thought to be decreasing. In 1970, the West and South together accounted for slightly under half of the population of the United States; now, they account for 62 percent.
This is a change in political power. Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, and Texas, which gained two members, are the six states that gained seats in Congress. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia all lost seats.
Some states came very close: according to a Census Bureau analyst, New York was just 89 people away from retaining its seat. Other shocks included the fact that Arizona, which was anticipated to gain a seat, did not. Defying the fact that New York lost a seat, its population increased by more over 4%, despite previous census projections that the state would remain largely unchanged.
According to Dr. Ron Jarmin, interim director of the Census Bureau, the latest decennial census tallied 331,449,281 Americans as of April 1, 2020. The population increased by 7.4% in the preceding decade, somewhat higher than in the 1930s, when it increased by just 7.3 percent. The birthrate increased during that time as the economy began to recover from the Great Depression. However, after falling in the aftermath of the Great Recession in 2008, it has continued to fall this time.
According to demographers, the lower birthrate, coupled with fewer immigration inflows and changing age demographics – there are now more Americans 80 and older than 2 and younger — indicates the United States may be approaching an era of much weaker population growth. This would align the US with European and East Asian nations facing significant long-term problems due to increasingly aging populations.
Since its recent high in 2007, the birthrate has dropped by approximately 19%. Credit… The New York Times’ Valaurian Waller
The federal government announced on Wednesday that the birthrate fell for the sixth year in a row in 2020, providing early indications that the coronavirus epidemic has exacerbated a tendency among American women to postpone childbearing.
Early in the epidemic, there was anticipation that significant changes in American families’ lives might lead to a rebound in the birthrate as couples dug down together. In reality, they seemed to have had the opposite effect: births fell significantly towards the end of the year, when infants conceived during the epidemic would have given birth.
A monthly analysis of official statistics revealed that births fell by approximately 8% in December compared to the same month the previous year. December had the most significant drop of any month. The statistics indicated that births decreased by 4% during the course of the year. Last year, the United States had 3,605,201 births, the lowest number since 1979. Since its recent high in 2007, the birthrate — defined as the number of infants per thousand women aged 15 to 44 — has dropped by approximately 19 percent.
The decreasing birthrate is just one aspect of the country’s changing demographics. The country’s population has grown at the second-slowest pace since the government began counting in the 18th century, thanks to a significant leveling down of immigration and increasing mortality. The pandemic, which raised the mortality rate while lowering the birth rate, seems to have accelerated this tendency.
According to Kenneth Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, the decrease in births is adding to the aging of the American population, which is up by approximately 18 percent from 2019: According to Dr. Johnson, there were more deaths than births in 25 states last year, up from five at the end of 2019.
“The birthrate is at an all-time low,” he added. “At some time, the issue will arise: Will the women who postponed having children ever have them? If they don’t, it’ll be a lasting blemish on the American birthing system.”
In September 2020, Bexar County Democrats will attend an event in San Antonio, Texas, to support the Democratic Party’s national and local ticket. Credit… The New York Times’ Christopher Lee
In April, the Census Bureau published two significant sets of data that had far-reaching consequences for American politics — and that contradicted certain long-held beliefs among Democrats and Republicans alike.
Long-term demographic trends favored Democrats, according to the first set of data: Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and multiracial voters increased as a share of the electorate over the last two presidential elections, while white voters — who historically support the GOP — fell to 71 percent in 2020 from 73 percent in 2016.
The other set of data revealed a different picture. In the South and West, population growth continues to accelerate, to the point that certain Republican-leaning states in those areas are acquiring more Electoral College votes. President Biden’s states will be worth 303 electoral votes, down from 306 electoral votes in 2020. The Democratic Electoral College deficit has just become worse.
These demographic and population changes reveal something important about American political politics: growing racial diversity among voters isn’t helping Democrats as much as liberals want, or hurting Republicans as much as conservatives fear.
The increasing Democratic Electoral College deficit highlights how the country’s growing diversity may not be enough to help Democrats win where they need it most. Similarly, population growth is concentrated in red states such as Texas and Florida, where the Democrats do not gain nonwhite voters in large enough numbers to overcome the state’s Republican advantage.
The commonly held belief that the Republican Party would suffer when white voters as a proportion of the electorate declines may be more fiction than fact. The party’s prospects have not been significantly harmed by the country’s increasing ethnic diversity. Instead, Republicans are up against a problem that they frequently overlook: white voters.
The US Census Bureau released its most recent estimates about the population and personal income in more than 3,000 areas across the country. The report, called the American Community Survey (ACS), covers about 3 percent of the country’s total land area. Since the first ACS was completed in 2008, the ACS has been conducted annually to provide an overview of the population, housing, and economic conditions in US communities.. Read more about 2020 census largest cities and let us know what you think.
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