It was state-specific,” said Waldholtz, who works in nonprofit development. They had previously lived in Orlando and missed Florida’s palm trees and blue skies. But the Tampa area grew bigger because of an influx of more than 45,000 new residents, such as Jennifer Waldholtz who moved from Atlanta with her husband in 2020. Pittsburgh’s overall population declined by almost 14,000 residents because people left. metropolitan areas, in the range of 10,000 residents each. Pittsburgh and Tampa had the largest natural decreases of U.S. “It’s like a perfect storm, if you will, that produced this natural decrease.” “You have more older Americans, and birth rates are low so you don’t have many children being born, and then along comes COVID, and it hits older adults the most, often in rural areas without access to good health care,” said Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire. The trend was fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as fewer births and an aging population. counties experienced a natural decrease from deaths exceeding births, up from 55.5% in 2020 and 45.5% in 2019. With the natural decrease, we will go back to normal.”īetween mid-2020 and mid-2021, there was a stark increase in deaths outpacing births across the country. “We’re at one of the lowest levels of immigration in a long, long time, and that affects big metros like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. There is clearly a dispersion, but I think it’s a blip,” said Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s metropolitan policy program, Brookings Metro. Growth in micro areas was led by Kalispell, Montana Jefferson, Georgia and Bozeman, Montana.ĭemographer William Frey said he believes the growth of micro areas and decreases in the biggest metros will be temporary, taking place at the height of people moving during the pandemic when work-from-home arrangements freed up workers from having to go to their offices. The small population gains were driven by people moving there, as deaths continued to outpace births in many of these communities. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2021 estimates also showed micro areas - defined as having a core city of less than 50,000 residents - gaining population from mid-2020 to mid-2021, after years of slow growth or declining population. “Texas has a thing about it, a romantic thing, with cowboys, and there’s the idea here of the Lone Star State,” said Giusti in describing the lure of Texas.
In the Phoenix metropolitan area, growth was driven by moves from elsewhere in the U.S., while it was propelled by a combination of migration and births outpacing deaths in Dallas and Houston. On the flip side, the Dallas area grew by more than 97,000 residents, Phoenix jumped by more 78,000 people and greater Houston added 69,000 residents, including Giusti. The San Jose, Boston, Miami and Washington areas also lost tens of thousands of residents primarily from people moving away. Metropolitan Los Angeles lost almost 176,000 residents, the San Francisco area saw a loss of more than 116,000 residents and greater Chicago lost more than 91,000 people from 2020 to 2021. It was driven by people leaving for elsewhere, even though the metro area gained new residents from abroad and births outpaced deaths.
metropolitan areas was led by New York, which lost almost 328,000 residents. The pandemic intensified population trends of migration to the South and West, as well as a slowdown in growth in the biggest cities in the U.S.