Immigration played a crucial role in driving population growth in the largest urban counties across the U.S. last year.
The core counties within the Houston, Miami, and Phoenix metropolitan areas experienced the most significant growth nationwide, primarily due to an influx of people from outside the country, as revealed by the latest population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
These statistics, released on Thursday, highlight the role of international migration in urban expansion.
In the absence of international migration, key counties such as Harris County in Texas, Miami-Dade County in Florida, and Maricopa County in Arizona would have seen minimal or no significant population growth last year.
This is primarily due to domestic migration patterns showing more people moving out than moving in. Notably, Miami-Dade County would have faced a population decline since the natural increase, where births outnumber deaths, was insufficient to counterbalance the outflow of current residents.
The year 2024 witnessed immigration propelling the United States’ population growth to its swiftest rate in over two decades, with the nation surpassing 340 million inhabitants.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently altered its method of counting immigrants by including more individuals admitted for humanitarian reasons, often temporarily.
“A substantial excess of births over deaths has long been the primary driver of U.S. population growth, but as this surplus dwindled in the last four years, immigration provided the bulk of the nation’s population increase,” stated a senior demographer.
Examining the choices of where immigrants and current U.S. residents prefer to live, a continued pattern of divergence emerges.
Immigrants are gravitating towards urban cores of major metropolitan areas, whereas domestic residents opt for suburban regions.
The most popular destinations for international migrants included Miami-Dade and Harris counties, while domestic movers preferred areas such as Montgomery County in Texas and Pasco County in Florida.
The New York metropolitan area experienced a resurgence following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Initially, dense regions like New York saw a notable exodus, yet they have since been recovering as the pandemic waned.
The New York metro area, the largest in the U.S. with nearly 20 million residents, added more people than any other metro area last year, with nearly 288,000 immigrants contributing significantly to this growth.
Other areas, such as San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have similarly gained through international migration after initial population losses during the pandemic.
Nationwide, nearly two-thirds of the 3,144 counties saw growth last year.
However, in the majority of these counties, deaths continued to outnumber births, emphasizing the importance of immigration in population increases. Remarkably, last year’s natural growth was drastically less than the average annual population gain seen in the five years preceding the pandemic.
“These recent levels of natural decrease are unprecedented,” noted an expert in demographic trends.
