A significant drop in immigration has slowed population growth across the United States.
On March 26, the U.S. Census Bureau posted annual estimates for population change between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, in 413 metro areas. The figures are useful to developers and investors, not only for pointing out where the largest increases and decreases occurred but also how growth rates changed from the year before.
In general, population growth slowed sharply throughout the United States, from a rate of 1% in 2024 to 0.5% in 2025. An earlier Census Bureau release showed that only two states — West Virginia and Montana — logged higher growth in 2025 than in 2024. The March release noted that 80% of metro areas had slower growth in 2025. (The Census Bureau lists 387 metro areas, including 13 large metros for which it reports totals for two or more divisions. This article counts these 39 divisions individually but excludes the combined areas to avoid double counting.)
The slowdown was principally due to a huge drop in immigration, from 2.7 million (net of emigrants) in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025. The Census Bureau noted in the recent release that 9 out of 10 U.S. counties experienced lower net immigration levels in 2025 than in 2024. The 1 in 10 counties that did not see a drop in international migration did not realize an increase either.
The good news: Growth accelerated in a number of metro areas. Some of these already showed above average growth in 2024, but others broke into the top 10 in 2025, making them newly attractive for some developers and investors.
The biggest growth spurt (more than 0.8 percentage points) occurred in the Bloomington, Indiana, metro area, where population had declined by 0.4% in 2024 but increased by 0.5% in 2025. (Metro areas and divisions comprise one or more entire counties but are named for their most populous cities.)
Significant acceleration (0.7 percentage points apiece) also occurred in two already fast-growing areas known principally as retirement destinations: Wildwood-The Villages, Florida, where growth climbed from 1.6% in 2024 to 2.3% in 2025, and Pinehurst-Southern Pines, North Carolina, where growth accelerated from 1.4% to 2.1%.
Another way of identifying growth prospects is by numerical change. While many metros continued to grow last year, few areas actually added more residents in 2025 than they added in 2024. Only one area exceeded a positive difference of 2,000 residents: Jackson, Mississippi, added 1,350 residents in 2025 after losing 868 in 2024, for a net pickup of 2,218. In second place was Fayetteville, North Carolina, which went from a gain of 562 residents in 2024 to 2,505 in 2025, a net pickup of 1,943.
The three metro areas with the steepest percentage point declines in population growth rates were along the U.S.-Mexico border: Laredo, Texas (from 3.2% in 2024 to 0.2% in 2025); Yuma, Arizona (3.3% to 1.4%); and El Centro, California (1.2% to minus 0.7%). Each of these areas was heavily affected by the virtual shutdown of land-based immigration.
The tightening of immigration also had a big impact on U.S. metro areas that have historically served as initial destinations for immigrants from many parts of the world. Population growth in the New York-Jersey City-White Plains (New York-New Jersey) metro division slowed by 205,521, from 210,718 in 2024 to just 5,197 in 2025. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale (California) metro division went from a gain of 16,300 residents in 2024 to an outflow of 53,934 in 2025, a downturn of 70,234. Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands (Texas) maintained an above-average growth rate of 1.6% in 2025, but its numerical increase contracted by 63,531, from 190,251 in 2024 to 126,720 in 2025.
The takeaway: 2025 was a year of significant changes in growth patterns. Investors and developers should consider how an area’s growth rate compared with the previous 12 months rather than merely looking at its ranking for the latest period.
Ken Simonson is the chief economist with the Associated General Contractors of America. Contact him at ken.simonson@agc.org.
