Immigration decline is reversing post-COVID population growth in these cities

America’s largest cities were bouncing back from their post-pandemic population losses. But the latest Census Bureau data shows that the post-COVID rebound for many metropolises stalled or reversed in 2025.

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. 

“Domestic migration is a kind of zero-sum. Some places lose numbers, some places gain them. But immigration is more broad-based across the country. That's why you can have much more of a pervasive decline," said William Frey, demographer with the Brookings Institution.

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.

Beyond immigration trends, the high cost of living in big cities has pushed residents to move to the suburbs. The census data shows that population growth in midsize cities held relatively steady, and some midsize cities on the edge of metro areas grew faster than the metro itself. 

For example, Port Chester, a village in New York, had a 4.1% increase in population, while its nearest big city, New York City, saw a 0.1% decline.  

“Midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers,” said Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division in the latest population report, released May 14. 

Similar shifts appeared in some other major cities. About 40 miles from Dallas, Celina, Texas, a medium-sized city with a population of over 64,000, saw a 25% increase in population while Dallas had a 0.1% decrease. 

The deceleration has meant that about a third of America's biggest cities have fewer residents today than they did five years ago, according to USA TODAY's analysis of the population estimates.

"These are some of the most expensive places to live," said David Bier, director of immigration studies at Cato Institute, describing the coastal metropolitan cities. "People are moving to more favorable places to live that are more affordable." 

The idea of moving out of major metro areas to buy a home and settle in the suburbs is nothing new. The pandemic reinforced such a migration trend. 

"If your family moves out to the suburbs, that can create a momentum of its own. You follow where your friends and your family members are going. A lot of these trends are self-reinforcing once they start happening at scale,” said Bier. 

What’s happening now may only be the beginning.  

Bier cautioned that the current census estimates capture only a partial impact of recent immigration policies under the administration of President Donald Trump. When the next year’s numbers come in, which would cover July 2025 to July 2026, Bier said he expected a steeper decline. 

Immigrants play a key role in sustaining population growth in many large U.S. cities, according to Frey with Brookings. Without that inflow, cities that already rely on immigration to offset domestic out-migration may struggle to maintain growth in their total population, child population, and working-age population. 

“Immigrants not only contribute to the size of the population but also make it younger,” he said. “When immigration declines for long periods of time, that can affect the age structure and eventually the number of births, but it takes a few years for that to show up.”