U.S. big cities grew in 2024, reversing COVID-era population declines

NEW YORK, May 16 (Xinhua) -- Populations in major American cities have bounced back from pandemic-induced drops, with New York, Houston and Los Angeles leading the way, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau, a recovery that experts said was fueled primarily by immigration.

The data released on Thursday showed that 94 percent of the largest cities grew during the 12-month period ending in June 2024, while the country's total population ticked up 1 percent.

"That's the largest yearly increase in nearly a quarter-century," said The Washington Post in its report about the data. "It's also a sharp turnaround from an anemic 0.16 percent growth during the year beginning in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic -- the lowest growth rate in at least 120 years."

"This shows a real bounce-back for a lot of these cities," William Frey, a senior demographer at think tank Brookings Institution who analyzed the data, was quoted as saying.

Steven Martin, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, an economic and social-policy research group, said the nationwide population increase is "the highest we've seen in a generation."

Migration is compelling this rise, the experts said. "The net international immigration ended up spread out across a lot of places," Martin said. "A lot of cities of a lot of sizes in a lot of regions."