Immigration Decline Is Reversing Post-Covid Population Growth in These Cities

{snip}

Big cities lost population during the pandemic, with nearly half of the largest U.S. cities reporting fewer residents in 2022 than in 2020. By 2024, two-thirds of these cities had begun adding residents again. But in 2025, almost all of them saw that momentum fade, with many recording losses in residents again.

Experts attributed much of it to one primary factor: a steep decline in net international migration.

{snip}

New York City had lost more than 388,000 residents, or about 4.5% of its population, between 2020 and 2022. The city regained more than half of those residents over the next two years. But the recovery didn’t last. While it remains the most populated city in the nation, it recorded the nation’s biggest numeric population loss between 2024 and 2025, of more than 12,000.

Los Angeles lost nearly 4,000 residents in 2025, while Boston lost over 1,000, compared to a year ago. Those are statistically flat declines of cities that had been recovering from pandemic-era outflows.

While these cities are seeing a reversal, others never recovered at all. Memphis in Tennessee, Albuquerque in New Mexico, and St. Louis in Missouri shed population during COVID and have continued to lose residents every year since.

The slowdown extends well beyond these struggling metros. The Census Bureau’s data, which estimates population changes between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, showed that the U.S. population grew by 1.8 million people, or 0.5%, the slowest rate since the pandemic.

The current tightened immigration policies have reduced the inflow of immigrants that many large cities have long depended on to offset domestic out-migration and aging populations. Frey added that all 56 major metro areas with populations over 1 million experienced declines in immigration.

{snip}