Populations in some major cities in the United States are starting to drop beneath projected levels, causing concerns among government officials about growth prospects and tax revenue. Changing urban populations also have a direct effect on real estate demand.
The population in Los Angeles, the second-largest U.S. city, was about 164,000 lower in 2021 than it was projected to be. Similarly, Houston, the fourth-largest city, was more than 233,000 below its projected population in 2021.
Large metropolitan areas have seen population declines since 2020, outpacing general population declines throughout the country since the beginning of the pandemic, according to reports from the U.S. Census Bureau and research organization the Brookings Institute. As a group, the population of big cities declined by almost 1% from 2020 to 2021, a Brookings study showed.
Some of the greatest population losses were in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Washington's population, which was on a steady incline from 2010 to 2020, fell to about 671,800 people in 2021, well below the projected mark of 750,000.
Housing costs may play a role in population declines, especially because many of the cities with the sharpest declines are also some of the nation’s priciest cities to live in. Cities that avoided population declines were smaller and had lower costs of living, such as Fort Worth, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Phoenix, according to Brookings.
The cause of these declines could be manifold, Brookings said. The pandemic resulted in increased deaths and decreased immigration, both of which contributed to relatively slow population growth in the U.S. as a whole. In cities, specifically, people simply moving from place to place has played a role in lower populations: San Francisco and New York both saw a sharp decrease in what’s known as domestic migration from 2020 to 2021.