04/14/2022
📈📉
America's biggest cities shrank during the pandemic.
New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are among those that saw an exodus of hundreds of thousands of residents, per US Census Bureau data. In New York, the decline was largely the result of people moving elsewhere, though births still outnumbered deaths. The area also saw an increase in residents from abroad, though at lower levels than in the past due to pandemic travel restrictions and changes in immigration policies.
On the other hand, cities in the South and West continued to grow. Texas was home to four of the top 10 largest and fastest-growing metro areas: Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Phoenix saw the largest net domestic migration gain, mostly due to residents moving in from elsewhere in the US.
In almost three-quarters of US counties, deaths outpaced births — up 55.5 percent in 2020 and 45.5 percent in 2019. The trend was fueled by fewer births, an aging population, and an increase in deaths, intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Overall, the US population grew just 0.1 percent — the lowest rate since the country began taking a census in 1790. The previous record for slowest population growth was from 1918-1919, amid the influenza pandemic and World War I.
