r/dataisbeautiful • u/TA-MajestyPalm • 4d ago

OC [OC] Post-Pandemic Population Growth Trends, by US Metro Area (2022->2024)

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Graphic by me, created in Excel. All data from US Census here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-total-metro-and-micro-statistical-areas.html

I've created similar graphics in the past, but usually from 2020-2024. This is not the best time frame as it combines the abnormal covid years with post pandemic movement.

This time frame (2022-2024) shows the most current and ongoing population trends of the last 2 years.

I also wanted to better categorize the cities into broad cultural regions vs the arbitrary geographic census regions.

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u/Rarewear_fan 4d ago

Interesting stats that are often divorced by what many Reddit users claim. Go on any board related to moving or where specifically Americans talk about their lives, and many are saying cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland are popping off, tons of people moving there, great places to live now, etc.

Now they have definitely gotten better in the last 10 years so there is truth, but the midwest and Northeast are not really growing anymore. In the South east it has popped off so much that house prices and property tax rates have exploded since COVID. They are stabilizing now, but the main driver for people moving (economic opportunity) has really gone up in the south along with the wealth it brought compared to even the 2000s.

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u/Abefroman12 3d ago

Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all experienced massive job loss in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Hundreds of thousands of people moved out of those cities during those decades. That population loss has massively slowed and reversed to a small increase.

For the locals who experienced that huge loss and are now starting to see the turnaround, any growth will seem remarkable. Even if the numbers themselves aren’t large increases.

I grew up in the Cleveland metro area and it’s hard to describe watching businesses, schools, and other institutions shut their doors for years without any “good” news coming in. So a lot of what is being said on Reddit is a big shift in perception of those older Rust Belt cities, which itself is a major win for them.

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u/randynumbergenerator 3d ago

The character of the growth may also be different between regions. Some (probably in the south) may be growing outwards more than upwards, which can be less noticeable. Another subdivision on the outskirts that you never see isn't as noticeable as a new building or formerly vacant storefronts that are now occupied.

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u/Chotibobs 3d ago

Nah the southern cities like Charlotte Miami and Austin are growing upwards big time too 

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u/hiplikebrando 3d ago

A nuance of Chicago (and probably a lot of Midwest metros) is that migration is area / neighborhood specific in these metros. In Chicago, lower income neighborhoods are emptying rapidly and “good” neighborhoods have strong growth. So they net out looking at a city level and can even show a net loss in population.

So it’s really a problem of people on Reddit complaining about too many people / lack of available housing, but only trying to pile into the same handful of areas rather than branch out.

For example: Englewood (a low income area) versus Lakeview or Lincoln Park which are two highly desirable areas.

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u/Rarewear_fan 3d ago

I agree with this. My wife and I are from the south and our area has boomed in the last 15 years, making our housing costs more expensive in basically any area of our metro. Even in the spreading out areas that are growing.

If we had great job opportunities in Chicago, we could easily afford housing up there by now, but I would also only be looking at a few areas, otherwise I wouldn't really want to live there.

It really shows that as incomes are rising, more people are taking action to build up/integrate into better neighborhoods, or just migrating out to somewhere more in demand.

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u/Tripod1404 4d ago

Some of this is also related to data being presented as percentages. 1% growth in Chicago metro area with 10M people is not too far off compared 6% growth at Orlando metro with 2.6M people.

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u/fastinserter OC: 1 4d ago

Yeah Raleigh with 5.31% growth is only 79k.

Many cities in the north already had a lot of people. South has more room because people lived where it was comfortable and the south was certainly not comfortable for a long time before AC, so higher growth rates don't necessarily even mean they are gaining more people than the northern cities.

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u/lilelliot 3d ago

I would suspect the Raleigh stats include the entire metro area, which is much more meaningful, and it's not like Durham, Apex, Morrisville, Cary, Holly Springs, Fuquay, Knightdale, Garner, Zebulon, etc haven't also been going gangbusters the past decade.

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u/evergleam498 3d ago

I've been driving through that area once a year for annual beach trip for about a decade now and every single time I'm like 'omg this wasn't here last time! how does this area keep growing?'

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u/Spara-Extreme 3d ago

Driving through RDU area the only thing you're going to be seeing off of any of the highways are trees, trees and more trees. Its been that way for decades.

The growth of strip malls and housing is off the highway.

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u/Rarewear_fan 4d ago

That's fair. I would also like to see which specific neighborhoods/areas in those cities are seeing the growth....most likely the wealthier areas. That's how it has been in mu city down south.

Another thing is you have more Americans continuing to move to cities from their small towns. If you live in rural Illinois, more and more of those people are leaving for Chicago as the closest city they can get to with actual opportunity.

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u/TA-MajestyPalm 3d ago

Dallas, Houston, and Miami are the 4th, 5th, and 6th largest metro areas in the US, all growing at over double the national rate

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u/ABCosmos OC: 4 3d ago edited 3d ago

There is so much complexity here that people want to sum up in a paragraph. Miami is highly desirable even though it has a high cost of living. Houston is appealing for it's low cost of living. Ultimately both are desired, but by different people for different reasons. This chart tells me DC and Miami are highly in demand, and people are willing to pay $$$ to live there.

Boston and NYC are surprisingly high considering they are "at capacity" and have very high costs of living. They must be in very high demand by people with money as well. (Or people are willing to live in terrible conditions to be there)

Southern cities have more room to expand and lower costs of living because they haven't been historically important cities that already grew, and they aren't currently in demand by the wealthy (Miami is an exception, and I'm sure there are a few others)

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u/CougarForLife 3d ago

I think percentage change was the “correct” way of measuring this, despite people’s criticisms, but I would be curious to see same chart with raw change to compare.

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u/CiDevant 3d ago

The Pop difference between the top three and the next three is staggering though.

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u/Tripod1404 3d ago

Yeah I don’t mean this applies to everything. But 1.63% increased in NYC metro with 20M people comes out at ~320k. 5.3% increase with Houston metro with 7M comes out as ~370k.

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u/Mohawk4Life 4d ago

Curious if divorced or a leading indicator. Migration is slow and even slower to show up in data.

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u/rowzayduckbucky 3d ago

In the case of Detroit and Pittsburgh it seems like the Downtowns are getting revitalized, which makes it look like the cities are doing well. But the outer areas of these cities are likely becoming emptier than ever. In Detroit some have even become urban forests

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u/shakilops 3d ago

Not even urban areas for Pittsburgh. The core region is pretty steady but a lot of the farther out rural counties are continually hemorrhaging population. Pittsburgh city grew per the last census! 

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u/saberplane 1d ago

Like someone said about Chicago tho some of the same exists in the Detroit metro. A lot more people have made moved into wealthier areas. A lot of the drain in the areas you speak of has already occured and the forestation is something the city is doing on purpose to allow it to concentrate city services. The cities proper of Chicago and also Detroit are huge square mileage wise even compared to some of their other older brethren. Chicago though of course never had nearly the flight Detroit experienced some decades ago.

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u/CiDevant 3d ago

Yes, but Detroit IS growing.  Which is a huge turnaround after losing almost half its population.

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u/EstablishmentFull797 3d ago

Metro area is different than the city. So for Pittsburgh, the core urban area can be growing and “popping off”while the outlying former mill towns and rural areas that once supported mining jobs continue to depopulate.

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u/99hoglagoons 3d ago

Go on any board related to moving or where specifically Americans talk about their lives, and many are saying cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland

The prompt is always "what is a cheap city that is walkable/urban" and there are not many options to list. Desirable ones are really really expensive.

Likewise nobody is asking "what is a great city with lots of suburbs and endless highways and strip malls and no sidewalks". Just throw a dart at the map.

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u/gsfgf 3d ago

Likewise nobody is asking "what is a great city with lots of suburbs and endless highways and strip malls and no sidewalks". Just throw a dart at the map.

They're probably already in one.

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u/reggie_veggie 3d ago

Idk about elsewhere but I live in the Texas Triangle (Dallas/ SanAn/ Houston/ Austin) that has had a lot of growth, and this isn't contradictory to me at all. I live here because my family lives here, and my family lives here for employment reasons. there are some things I like, but I wouldn't ever say it is a "great place to live" or tell someone they should move here. moving to Dallas or w/e is what you do when they have job openings in your industry and the average pay is nice compared to the cost of living, and you are willing to trade some quality of life for financial stability

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u/UnsurprisingDebris 4d ago

You are talking about cities and this graphic is talking about metro areas. Also, Pittsburgh has a very old average population.

Pittsburgh is getting a bunch of people moving to the area, but we also have a massive amount of elderly people dying here.

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u/Rarewear_fan 4d ago

I meant metro areas when I said "cities"

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u/UnsurprisingDebris 4d ago

Okay well there is part of the problem. Pittsburgh’s metro area includes a whole bunch of old mill, mining and farming towns that are hemorrhaging population and that in turn would drag down the "growth" of the metro.

I am in no way saying that Pittsburgh is booming by any means, but the data definitely doesn't tell the whole story.

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u/Rarewear_fan 3d ago

I’d like to see this same map but just for actual cities or specific neighborhoods/towns in a metro area adjusted for population. I still believe the south will be overly represented, but I also believe some high spots will be in specific neighborhoods/areas of larger metro areas that more and more people are migrating to.

Like if I had money in Chicago but didn’t want to leave, I’d definitely want to go to the best up and coming area in the metro.

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u/gsfgf 3d ago

But the redditors you're referring to are talking urban cores.

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u/flakemasterflake 3d ago

Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland are popping off,

i mean, cool people are moving there. I'm sure cool people move to Orlando but I haven't met one yet. But I know tons of artists moving to Detroit and Chicago

i assume older people, families and conservatives like Orlando. I do know artsy people that like Miami

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u/ds629 3d ago

Yep yep. Once again, if you take the most upvoted popular hivemind opinion on reddit and then inverse it, you'd be closer to reality and the truth.

"People are leaving Florida in droves" - wrong

"Texas is such a hellhole and they are losing so many people" - wrong

Doesn't even matter if you present them with the Census data (on the topic of population), they'll perform mental gymnastics instead of admitting they're wrong. I live in one of those northern metros, so it's not like I'm even personally invested in this topic.

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u/gsfgf 3d ago

They're correct about urban cores in rust belt cities. But this isn't a map of that.

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u/gsfgf 3d ago

cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland are popping off, tons of people moving there, great places to live now, etc.

The urban cores are popping off. But that's often a small part of the actual city, much less the metro area as a whole.

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u/varzaguy 1d ago

This map is comparing metro areas, not cities. Pittsburgh can still be popping off but the overall metro losing people.

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u/TheManWithTheFlan 21h ago

Clevelander here, even if more people are coming into those cities than before, it could be older populations dying off and making the net gain smaller. There are a lot of large suburbs around here where I swear the average age is 60+.

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u/Grouchy_Concept8572 9h ago

Most of Reddit thinks climate change is going to make the southern states uninhabitable and thinks the northern states are going to be the best places. They have a hate for the south and southwest.

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u/worksafe_Joe 3d ago

This chart is metro areas. Those cities very well could be popping off, that might not reflect if the suburbs around them aren't also.