US population growth tumbles after post-pandemic surge

Article originally posted on CoStar on February 4, 2026

The United States population is growing at its slowest rate since the height of the coronavirus pandemic, according to recently released U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

While that pace is set to ease further across the country, this structural slowdown is likely to amplify post-COVID regional population shifts to lower-density Southern and Western states, with implications for job and housing markets.

The 1.8 million people added between July 2024 and June 2025 represented a 0.5% growth rate. That’s a significant drop from the unusually fast growth of 1% in 2024, and slower than what occurred during the years prior to the pandemic, when annual population growth averaged 0.7% each year between 2011 and 2019.

A sharp drop in immigration was the primary driver of the slowdown. However, the full impact of the Trump administration’s tighter migration policies and more aggressive deportations likely won’t show up in these data until the coming years.

Net immigration fell by more than half to 1.3 million from a modern high of 2.7 million the year prior. That’s still 45% higher than the pre-pandemic annual average of around 870,000. However, if monthly trends since January 2025 continue, the Census Bureau projects net immigration to fall to 321,000 in the year ending with June 2026, which would be lower than even 2021, with potentially net negative immigration in the years to follow.

Immigration trends have fluctuated rapidly and attracted more recent headlines. But shifts in the natural increase, or the sum of births minus deaths, may be more persistent. A combination of lower birth rates and continued aging of the large baby boomer generation has hampered the recovery of the natural increase, which reached 519,000 through June 2025. Though the measure has increased since reaching an all-time low in 2021, it remains nearly 60% below the pre-pandemic average of around 1.2 million from 2011 to 2019.

This much slower natural increase, combined with potentially negative net immigration, will heighten the reliance of regional and state economies on domestic migration for continued growth.

Domestic migration also slowed nationwide in 2025. Though Southern states still predominate among the most popular destinations, some of the largest post-pandemic population magnets have begun to plateau.

Northeastern states continue to lose the most domestic migrants, with about 206,000 people departing the region for other parts of the country in 2025. Though population growth remained positive at 0.2%, that was largely due to continued net international immigration, and the region remained the nation’s slowest-growing.

Still, the 246,000 net international immigrants in 2025 represented a 60% year-over-year decline in international immigration, and continued declines in immigration could quickly lead to population loss in the nation’s slowest-growing region. Already, states such as Vermont and New York are seeing flat-to-negative population growth.

By contrast, though international immigration to the South fell by nearly half through 2025, net domestic migration remained positive, helping the region maintain its status as the fastest-growing in the country. Still, the 0.9% growth rate in 2025 was down from 1.4% in 2024 and below the pre-pandemic average of 1% growth from 2011 through 2019.

The pace of net domestic migration slowed in the South as well, falling 10% year-over-year to levels about 12% below pre-pandemic averages. The most notable declines came in the largest states. Domestic migration to Florida fell more than 60% in 2025 to just 22,500, while domestic migration to Texas fell 22% to 67,000.

Lower cost-of-living states, particularly the Carolinas, maintained higher levels of domestic migration, with many attracting movers from other parts of the South. North Carolina’s domestic migration of 84,000 led the nation, and South Carolina attracted more than 66,000 people from other parts of the country, nearly as many as the much larger Texas.

Cost-of-living concerns have also benefited parts of the Midwest. Though the region’s 0.4% population growth was below the national rate, the Midwest was the only region that grew faster in 2025 than its pre-pandemic annual average of 0.3%. Net domestic migration ticked into positive territory for the first time this decade as domestic migration gains in Missouri (14,000), Indiana (12,200), Ohio (12,000), and Minnesota (8,300) outpaced losses in Illinois ( down 40,000) and Iowa ( minus 1,000), among others.

The West Region grew 0.3% in 2025, the first time in more than a decade that the region grew more slowly than the Midwest. Though Idaho (1.4%), Utah (1.0%), Arizona (0.9%) and Nevada (0.9%) remained among the top 10 fastest-growing states, California returned to slightly negative population growth. More than 229,000 people left California for other parts of the country, while immigration into California fell 65% to 110,000.

In the longer term, the population has declined since 2019 in large states such as California ( down 0.5%) and New York ( minus 1.1%). Despite that decline, payroll jobs have recovered from pre-pandemic lows in both states.

Still, this growth rate remains below the nationwide 5.1% increase since 2019. Lower immigration and continued outward domestic migration could continue to hamper the job market here, with implications for key growth industry clusters such as tech in California and finance in New York.

Slower net international immigration was the leading cause of the slowdown in population growth last year, but an aging population and a sliding birth rate are co-conspirators.

The Census Bureau estimates that by 2030, the natural increase in population will turn negative as deaths outpace births, meaning the nation will be entirely dependent on immigration to keep its population growing. The connection between population growth and economic growth depends on productivity growth, which has been on the rise in recent years — and is likely to continue to rise as artificial intelligence implementation spreads. But whether productivity growth will be fast enough to offset a potentially declining population to keep economic growth on the positive side of the ledger remains an open question.