Southern, midsized cities lead population gains between 2024 and 2025

Last updated: June 4, 2026

By Tim Henderson | Stateline

Large, immigrant-rich cities saw population fall back between mid-2024 and mid-2025 after nation-leading increases the year before. 

Mid-sized cities led the pack in U.S. Census Bureau estimates to be released May 14. The largest numeric increases for the year were in Charlotte, North Carolina (up 20,731); Fort Worth, Texas (up 19,512); the Dallas suburb of Celina, Texas (up 12,710); and Seattle (up 11,572). 

Charlotte has been emphasizing affordable housing in recent years, including a city-sponsored 72-unit building on the site of a former mall, opening in late 2024. It was designed for older adults, people with incomes from 30% to 80% of the area’s median income, about $82,000 at the time. 

Morgan Dunn, 26, moved to Charlotte in 2024 for a banking job after growing up in California and living in Georgia and Utah. He and his wife are expecting their first child in September, and he said he likes having an affordable house with a half-acre lot where his four dogs can run.

“It’s a great city for the younger generations for the sake of job opportunities combined with the cost of living,” Dunn said in a message to Stateline.

New York City, which led the nation in growth between mid-2023 and mid-2024 with 162,991 more people, fell to dead last in population change — a decrease of 12,196 last year.  

Also near the bottom were Memphis, Tennessee (losing 4,575 people); Los Angeles, down 3,621; St. Louis, down 2,301, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, down 2,290. Like New York City, Los Angeles ranked high the year before with an increase of 24,421, seventh-highest in the nation before falling to third-to-last.

window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}});

Part of the reason for New York City’s fast-changing population shifts is that population growth was revised up for 2022-2024 to reflect more immigration, especially from asylum seekers, some of whom were bused from Texas. Parts of Queens had some of the largest influxes in the nation from asylum seekers, especially from Ecuador, according to a Stateline analysis. 

But immigration fell off in late 2024 and early 2025 as both the Biden and Trump administrations sought to put a lid on asylum seekers. Between 2024 and 2024 immigration “retreated from recent historical highs to more typical levels experienced before the pandemic,” according to a March report by New York City. Of the city’s five boroughs, only the Bronx and Staten Island gained population. 

“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in a statement. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”

In some states smaller cities had the big increases, such as the contrast between New York City’s decline and an increase of 2,933 in suburban Kiryas Joel village, a Hasidic Jewish enclave in Orange County, or New Mexico, where Albuquerque lost population but its suburb Rio Rancho gained 1,972. 

Louisiana’s Baton Rouge gained while New Orleans lost, as did Everett, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb that grew as the city lost population.

Some urban areas did well anyway: Atlanta had the biggest increase in Georgia, as did Chicago in Illinois, Detroit in Michigan, Kansas City in Missouri, and Newark in New Jersey. 

Other milestones: Austin, Texas, became the 12th city with more than a million residents, and Raleigh, North Carolina, became the 39th city of more than 500,000. The South had 11 of the top 12 numeric gains. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.