US, Wis population growth got a boost in 2024

One big post-COVID change in America is becoming apparent, as the US population grew by a sizable amount last year.

Immigration in 2024 drove U.S. population growth to its fastest rate in 23 years as the nation surpassed 340 million residents, the U.S. Census Bureau said....

The 1% growth rate this year was the highest it has been since 2001, and it was a marked contrast to the record low of 0.2% set in 2021 at the height of pandemic restrictions on travel to the United States, according to the annual population estimates.

Immigration this year increased by almost 2.8 million people, partly because of a new method of counting that adds people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons. Net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase between 2023 and 2024.

Births outnumbered deaths in the United States by almost 519,000 between 2023 and 2024, which was an improvement over the historic low of 146,000 in 2021 but still well below the highs of previous decades.

As you can see here, relying on immigration for our population growth is a very different pattern compared to how the US added people in the 2000s.

You can see how US population growth declined in the 1st Trump Administration as both immigration and birth rates declined, and how immigration has made up for further declines in birth rate in the last 3 years.

It also reflects the US Census Bureau using more comprehensive information to account for migrants that were missed in previous versions of the American Community Survey (ACS).

The Benchmark Database is a valuable tool for monitoring short-term changes in inflows and allows us to adjust our ACS-based estimates when appropriate. Additionally, our analysis sought to identify which cohorts were not being adequately captured. It revealed that recent humanitarian migrants, the group with the most significant growth in our benchmark data, were also the least likely to be included in the ACS.

To produce the Vintage 2024 estimates, we adjusted our [year-ago residence]-based, foreign-born immigration estimates upward to account for 75% of the humanitarian migrants in our Benchmark Database. We arrived at this adjustment factor after synthesizing different analyses of coverage error in the ACS and in consultation with internal and external migration experts. As noted in Table 1, this adjustment increased NIM [Net International Migration] estimates for the period of July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2023, in Vintage 2024 relative to the value from Vintage 2023.

This adjustment for humanitarian migrants was applied to the national total and then distributed down to states and counties using our usual method. As a result, the state and county estimates are also impacted by the adjustment.

And it ends up making quite a difference in the estimates of that NIM figure.

Moving it down to the states, the Census Bureau says Wisconsin gained 30,570 people in 2024. Like the country as a whole, most of that was through international immigration (+22,146). But there also were gains in births vs deaths (+2,040), and our state led the Midwest in the amount of people moving in from the rest of the country vs Sconnies moving out-of-state.

Net domestic migration, Midwest 2024
Wis. +6,332
Ind. +4,268
Iowa -231
Minn -1,161
Ohio -2,462
Mich -7,656
Ill. -56,235

While it's good to be leading our Midwestern neighbors, Wisconsin adding over 30,500 people still is only a one-year increase of 0.515%, barely half the 0.98% rate of growth that the country has for 2024. And because the US has continued to grow faster than Wisconsin and other Midwest states as a whole, Wisconsin is now on track to lose a member of the House of Representatives after 2030.

Texas and Florida have obviously attracted a lot of people to their states over the last four years, and are on pace to gain multiple new seats in both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College in 8 years. However, a lot of that is through immigration (Texas 38.3%, Florida 57.75%), which makes you wonder if that trend continues if the Trump Administration starts cracking down and deporting immigrants like he and his lackeys claim they will do.

In addition, Florida had a significant slowdown in net domestic migration this year - just above +64,000 when it had gained more than 808,000 from the rest of the country over the 3 years before. And I can’t think that 2 more years of Ron DeSantis Third World BS and increasing numbers and severity of hurricanes are going to make more people want to head that way.

Lots to think about with these stronger rates of population growth in both Wisconsin and the US. It's likely been a big reason behind our surprising economic growth over the last 2 years, even with higher interest rates. But this is another trend that feels like it is going to change in the near future, and the last thing we need are more headwinds from Trump/GOPs who seem likely to already cause a few due to bad policy.