Population growth in U.S. metro areas outpaced previous years and is largely being fueled by international migration, the Census Bureau found.
A report released Thursday by the bureau found major counties in Texas, Florida and Arizona saw the largest growth in population.
More than 105,000 people moved to Harris County, home to Houston; more than 64,000 moved to Miami-Dade County in Florida; and more than 57,000 moved to Maricopa County, which houses Phoenix, from 2023 to 2024.
Researchers noted that international migration played a key role in overcoming declining population rates in metro areas, as birth rates were not able to outpace the thousands of people who moved away from cities.
“While births continue to contribute to overall growth, rising net international migration is offsetting the ongoing net domestic outmigration we see in many of these areas,” Kristie Wilder, a Census demographer, said in a statement.
International migrants accounted for nearly 2.7 million of the 3.2 million people moving to U.S. cities over the one-year period, with each of the country’s 387 metro areas seeing an uptick.
The estimate from the Census shows that migrants continue to choose larger urban areas to reside, while people already residing in the U.S. favor suburban areas, The Associated Press noted.
Some cities that experienced a population decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, when thousands of people fled crowded cities, have since seen an increase in their population, the Census Bureau report found.
That includes metro areas in New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia, as well as San Francisco, according to the report.
The fastest-growing metro areas were largely in the South, including Florida.
