Biggest US cities lost population during pandemic, Sunbelt saw gains, census data shows

Ko Im always thought she would live in New York forever. She knew every corner of Manhattan and had worked hard to build a community of friends. Living in a small apartment, she found her attitude shifting early in the pandemic. After her brother accepted a job in Seattle in the summer of 2020, she decided to move there too. "It was fine until it wasn’t," said Im, 36. "The pandemic really changed my mindset about how I wanted to live or how I needed to live." Eight of the 10 largest cities in the U.S. lost population during the first year of the pandemic, with New York, Los Angeles and Chicago leading the way. Between July 2020 and July 2021, New York lost more than 305,000 people, while Chicago and Los Angeles contracted by 45,000 residents and 40,000 people, respectively. Although San Francisco's not among the 10 largest cities, almost 55,000 residents left that city, or 6.3% of its 2020 population, the highest percentage of any U.S. city.

Among the 10 largest U.S. cities, only San Antonio and Phoenix gained new residents, but they added only about 13,000 people each, or less than 1% of their populations, according to 2021 vintage population estimates. Justin Jordan’s move to Phoenix a year ago was motivated by a job offer paying him more money than the one in Moundsville, West Virginia, where he had been living. He has had to adjust to 110 degree Fahrenheit (43.3 degree Celsius) temperatures and unwieldly traffic. "I love the weather, the atmosphere, and all the stuff to do," said Jordan, 33, a senior operations manager for a business services firm. Austin and Fort Worth in Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Columbus, Ohio also registered modest population gains. In March, the Census Bureau released estimates for metro areas and counties showing changes from mid-2020 to mid-2021. The estimates released Thursday offer a more granular perspective. For instance, the March data showed metro Dallas had the largest population gain of any metro area in the U.S., adding more than 97,000 residents, but Thursday's estimates show the city of Dallas lost almost 15,000 residents. The growth occurred in Dallas suburbs like Frisco, McKinney and Plano. Reasons for population changes vary from city to city, driven by housing costs, jobs, births and deaths. The pandemic and the lockdown that followed in spring 2020 made living in a crowded city less appealing for a time, and those who could leave -- workers who could do their jobs remotely, for example -- sometimes did.