According to estimates made public on Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States increased by 1.2 million this year, with growth mostly being driven by foreign migration. The country currently has 333.2 million residents.
Between 2021 and 2022, there were almost a million fewer individuals leaving the United States than arriving. This is known as net foreign migration. According to the vintage 2022 population estimates, every state gained people from abroad, representing a growth rate of 168% over the 376,029 foreign migrants the year before.
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It was the first year-over-year gain in total births since 2007 thanks to natural growth, which is calculated as the sum of the number of births minus the number of deaths.
The 0.4% annual growth rate for the United States this year was an improvement above the 0.1% growth rate that occurred from 2020 to 2021 when the pandemic was at its worst and was the lowest growth rate recorded since the country’s establishment.
Nearly 219,000 persons were lost in the Northeast as a whole, a trend that was mostly sparked by domestic residents leaving New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts as well as Pennsylvania’s higher death rate than the birth rate. In addition, the Midwest lost over 49,000 individuals as a result of migration out of Illinois and Ohio’s birth rate exceeding mortality rates.
The South experienced the highest population growth of any area, adding 1.3 million people, mostly due to population growth in Texas and Florida which was close to a half million people apiece. The number of residents in Texas, the country’s second-most populated state, has topped 30 million, making it the only other state in this category after California.
But California had the second-largest yearly fall behind New York, losing more than 113,000 individuals, and its population fell to just over 39 million in 2022. More than 343,000 domestic inhabitants left California, which contributed to the population drop, and also slowed the West region’s population growth to just 153,000 people.
The Western area would have seen population loss if domestic inhabitants had not also left Oregon and Washington, as well as if there had not been a significant rise in births surpassing deaths due to foreign migration.
Due to emigration and deaths outnumbering births, Puerto Rico lost 40,000 citizens, or 1.3% of its total population; the island now has 3.2 million inhabitants.
