There’s new data on population trends in the U.S. and it’s making headlines.
According to the U.S. Census, population growth has slowed dramatically nationwide with an increase of just a half a percent in 2025 compared with the previous year’s 1% rate. The total number of residents in the U.S. now stands at 341.8 million.
Net international migration fell to 1.3 million – way down from 2.7 million in 2024.
The only region where every state saw population growth is the Midwest. South Carolina was the No. 1 fastest-growing state, followed by Idaho at No. 2 and North Carolina after that.
Texas comes in at fourth fastest-growing. The Lone Star State did add more people than any other state – more than a thousand people per day.
Lloyd Potter, Texas state demographer based at the University of Texas at San Antonio, joined Texas Standard to break down the numbers. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: I presume you’ve had a chance to check out these numbers? What are they telling you?
Lloyd Potter: Well, you pretty well just kind of went over most of it. But certainly, I think the headline here is the decline that we’re seeing in international migration. And you describe that nationally, but it certainly is having an impact on us here in Texas.
Last year, between ’23 and ’24, our population change, more than half of it was attributable to international migration. And so we saw in this most recent year that that’s kind of declined pretty dramatically. And so when we look at these numbers and we look the declining number of international migrants, you can see that that is having an impact on population change here in Texas.
And then additionally, we’re seeing that we saw a slight decline in domestic migration, as well, in Texas. So there are fewer people coming from other states than what we’ve seen historically, and certainly we’ve seen a slight decline over the last couple of years in domestic migration, but that’s a factor.
And then the other component of population change is what we refer to as “natural change,” which is births minus deaths. And we saw, interestingly, the number of births went up a little bit in Texas… Not necessarily. We might have had a slight increase in the rate of birth rate. But we saw an increase in the number of deaths. So natural change did not contribute as much as it has, historically, as well.
So we essentially are kind of looking at these three major components of change: domestic migration, international migration, and natural change. And all of them have slowed down a little bit for Texas, even though, again, as you noted, we added more population than any other state and we’re the fourth fastest-growing state in the country.
So it’s not like we’ve taken a nosedive, but certainly we’re looking at not growing as robustly as we have been in the recent past.
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Yeah, I was looking at these raw numbers that Texas added more than 391,000 new residents. This, I believe, is the third consecutive year Texas has led the rest of the nation, just if you’re looking at the raw population growth numbers.
What seems to be driving that, from what you can tell?
Certainly, the growth that we’re experiencing, I mean, part of it is the natural change. So that’s something. And Texas is a relatively young state, so we tend to have more births than we have deaths… Not “we tend too,” we always have been for a long time.
And then, of course, the international migration is a factor, but domestic migration, what really drives that is usually the major factor is economics. So when we look at jobs being created, new businesses starting and things like that, those things are going to result in people in other states where maybe they’re not making as much money or the job they have is not the one they wanted. There’s one in Texas, they’re going to move to Texas to take that job.
You know, I was reading something just the other day about how when it comes to these population trends, the winners tend to… Sort of winning begets winning, and losing tends to lead to a kind of downward spiral – that population trends are tied to state finances because more people means more workers, more consumers contributing to economic activity. That generates more tax revenue and that perhaps can help feed into services and infrastructure.
On the other hand, a downward trend can be both a cause and an effect of what’s happening in a state’s economy.
Is there a takeaway from these numbers in Texas as you see it?
Well, it certainly implies, even though, again, I think we need more data to kind of say that it’s a trend, but it certainly applies a little bit of an economic slowdown. And I’m saying that not having looked at economic trends in Texas.
So the implication there is, I mean, if you assume that domestic migration is being driven by economic factors, it’s certainly suggesting that things are a little less.
And all that said, it was like, we still have a lot of domestic migrants coming to Texas. So it’s not like there aren’t people coming here anymore. I mean, we’re still growing a lot from people coming here, and our economy is growing. I think the issue is perhaps that maybe it’s not growing quite as fast as it has been in the recent past.
And I think that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I certainly know politicians would like to see our economy continuing to grow, but when I look at the population growth that we see in some of our suburban ring counties, just tremendous growth. And they can’t seem to keep up with infrastructure demand.
So it would essentially kind of give a bit of a break to politicians and bureaucrats who are responsible for ensuring that the roads are built and the water supply is there and the electricity is there and so on. So slowing growth isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as we’re continuing on a positive trend.
I see. And I would imagine that that would be one of the key policy takeaways here.
But if trends continue here in Texas, what do you think we’re going to be looking at next year? Is that just too far out in advance, or what do you think?
Well, one of the things we know – that the data that were used for this recent set of population estimates that Census Bureau released – is that kind of half of that was during the Biden administration and half of it’s been during the Trump administration. And so even though the Biden administration kind of really did slow international migration in the last year or two that they were in office, it still was higher than what we’re seeing right now.
So what we’re expecting is that, assuming that the current administration continues the border security that they have implemented, we’re likely to see even smaller numbers of international migrants coming into the United States and consequently into Texas. And that will likely then result in slowing our growth a little bit more than what we’ve seen this year.
