2020 Census: The Fastest Growing States in the US

Find out where the fastest growing states in the US as of the 2020 Census are below.

US Population Growth Slows

Last week the US Census Bureau released the first set of data from the 2020 edition of the decennial census. The total population of the United States was 331,449,281 as of April 1, 2020. This was a 7.4% increase over the last census in 2010. However, the rate of growth was the lowest since the 1940 Census. By contrast, the rate of population growth between 1990 and 2000 was nearly double at 13.2%.

Changes Coming to Congress

The US Census serves an important political purpose. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives to each state is determined by the official census count. The number of seats in the House is fixed at 435, and each member will represent an average of 761,169 residents as of the 2020 Census. Because of population growth patterns, Texas will gain two seats in the House; Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon will each gain one seat; and California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia will each lose one seat.

The Fastest Growing States

So, which states are growing the fastest? Every state, except West Virginia, Illinois, and Mississippi recorded positive population growth between 2010 and 2020 (Puerto Rico also had negative growth). But as you can see from the table below the states of Utah, Idaho, and Texas have led the nation in population growth over the decade. All three of these states are notable for their relatively low costs of living, making them prime destinations for people relocating from more expensive coastal states. Just a little further down the list are Florida and Arizona, which have long been major retirement destinations for residents of cold climate states.

Note that this list doesn’t tell the whole story of migration flows. Americans aren’t just moving to cheaper states in the western half of the country, but have also been moving within states to more urban areas. Population growth in the District of Columbia (which would rank 7th as a state), is symbolic of this trend.

The Fastest Growing Regions

Zooming out a bit, we’ll look at which regions of the country are growing the fastest. For details on how we define each region see our Ratings Guide. As you probably surmised from the list above, the warm weather South and West are the fastest growing regions. Both regions grew by about 10% between 2010 and 2020. By contrast the Northeast and Midwest regions grew at about half that pace. If we break down each region into constituent sub-regions, the disparity becomes even starker. The Mountain states of the West region (CO, ID, NT, UT, WY) grew at nearly five times the pace of the Great Lakes states at the core of the Midwest (IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI).

What the Future Holds

If history is any indicator the states which lead in population growth for the last decade will more or less lead in growth in the next decade. Even going back two censuses ago to 2000, eight of the current ten fastest growing states were also among the ten fastest growing between 1990 and 2000. The two new-comers are South Carolina (which supplanted its northern neighbor) and North Dakota. The real unknown is how fast the nation as a whole will grow. The nation’s growth is dependent on a host of factors including international migration, birth rates, and death rates, which are in turn influenced by economic and other factors.