Immigrants Dominate U.S. Population Growth

Immigrants are having a huge impact on the nation’s population growth, new federal estimates show.

Newcomers accounted for 84% of U.S. growth in the year ended June 30, the Census Bureau said Thursday, continuing a trend since the Covid-19 pandemic. This was fueled by a surge in legal and illegal arrivals, a falling birthrate and a death rate propped up by an aging population.

The Census Bureau estimates include major revisions to earlier estimates that are intended to better capture a surge in immigration. The bureau estimates about 2.7 million net arrivals for the most recent year. The bureau also more than doubled its net immigration estimate for the prior year to about 2.3 million.

The agency now estimates the U.S. grew by 8.5 million over the past four years, with immigrants accounting for the vast majority.

For the most recent year, through June 30, the bureau estimates that the U.S. population grew by about 1% to 340.1 million. This is the fastest growth since 2001, the bureau said.

Much of this growth came in states such as Texas (563,000) and Florida (467,000). Only three states were estimated to have lost population, and just barely: Vermont, West Virginia and Mississippi. The South accounted for 54% of the latest year’s growth.

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Immigrants became a major source of U.S. growth because of recently high numbers of people coming to the U.S., a historically low birthrate and a death rate that, while down from pandemic peaks, remains elevated in part because of the graying population. In two decades before the pandemic, immigrants consistently accounted for less than half of U.S. population growth.

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Many states would have lost population if not for immigration. California, for example, lost about 240,000 people to other states. But it netted about 361,000 immigrants, Census estimates show. New Jersey lost a net 36,000 residents to other states but added 131,000 from abroad. Overall, about two-thirds of immigrants who arrived in the last year were concentrated in 10 states.

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Census estimates have struggled to keep pace with the recent immigration surge while relying largely on the bureau’s survey of roughly two million households from the prior year. The fresh estimates add newly available government data on refugees to better capture the immigration impact.

The Congressional Budget Office drew attention in January when it estimated that net immigration—the difference between incoming and departing people—reached 3.3 million last year. The new Census Bureau estimate at least partially closed that gap.

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