Texas cities see largest population increases in the U.S., likely boosted by immigration

Atlanta, in Georgia, and Forth Worth, in Texas, are the large cities that have seen the fastest growth in the population between 2022 and 2023, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

Concretely, Atlanta saw a 2.4% population increase, the figure being 2.2% for Fort Worth. Raleigh, North Carolina (1.9%), Henderson, Nevada (1.8%) and Charlotte, North Carolina (1.7%) completed the top five.

On the other end of the spectrum, New Orleans, Louisiana, had the larges population decrease during the period, with 1.6%, with St. Louis, Missouri, showing the same percentage drop.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1%), New York (0.9%) and Memphis, Tennessee (0.8%) comprise the top five of largest population decreases. Despite the decline, New York continued to be the largest city in the country with almost 8.3 million people. It was followed by Los Angeles, with nearly 4 million.

Other salient findings from the data show that southern cities are dominating the ranking of growing metro areas, accounting for eight of the top 20.

"The population growth across the South in 2023 was driven by significant numeric and percentage gains among its cities," said Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau's Population Division.

However, the Census Bureau also noted that large cities in the Northeast and Midwest reversed population declines and went back to growing between 2022 and 2023.

Looking at smaller cities, Texas completely dominates the population growth list, with eight of the top 15 being in its state likely boosted by a large increase in immigration.

San Antonio saw the largest nominal increase, adding almost 22,000 residents during the period and getting close to 1.5 million. It was followed by Fort Worth, also with over 21,000 new residents.

Celina, near Dallas, had the largest percentage growth, with 26% during the period. That is more than 53 times the country's growth rate, the Census noted. Fulshear (25.6%), Princeton (22.3%) and Anna (16.9%), all from Texas, follow suit on the list. Lathrop, in California, is the first city from elsewhere to make the list with a 13.6% increase in its population.