{"id":689320,"date":"2026-03-29T03:38:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/689320\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T03:38:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T03:38:33","slug":"d-fw-adds-120000-plus-people-census-report-shows-but-dallas-county-shrinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/689320\/","title":{"rendered":"D-FW adds 120,000-plus people, census report shows \u2014 but Dallas County shrinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The D-FW area added more than 120,000 people from July 2024 to July 2025, according to a new census estimate<\/a>, a numeric increase among U.S. metro areas that was second only to that of greater Houston. <\/p>\n

But the growth didn\u2019t come from the region\u2019s largest county: Dallas County, which still ranked as the country\u2019s eighth most populous, actually lost population over the time period. Collin County, meanwhile, saw significant growth, adding around 43,000 people, second nationally only to Harris County, which includes the bulk of greater Houston. More rural \u2014 and affordable \u2014 Kaufman County also saw a major jump, adding more than 11,000 people for a growth rate of nearly 6%, the country\u2019s third highest. <\/p>\n

The new figures, published by the Census Bureau on Thursday, hint at potentially major implications for the future of D-FW. For years, the region has ranked among the country\u2019s fastest-growing metro areas, with some estimates projecting North Texas \u2014 which has a current population estimated around 8.5 million, fourth among U.S. metro areas \u2014 will eventually surpass 12 million people<\/a> and even challenge greater LA as the nation\u2019s second-largest metro area. <\/p>\n

Yet the explosive population growth \u2014 which has coincided with a pronounced business and finance sector surge<\/a> \u2014 simultaneously brings numerous challenges, including higher rents and stretched infrastructure. It\u2019s also been unevenly distributed, with some parts of the Metroplex experiencing major density and prosperity booms while other areas have languished. The new census data is likely to only add to increasingly urgent questions about the future of Dallas\u2019 urban core, in particular, at a time when some of central Dallas\u2019 most important businesses and institutions, including AT&T and the Dallas Stars, are leaving or considering leaving the city center. <\/p>\n

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\u201cDowntown Dallas needs to have a reckoning,\u201d Steve Triolet, an executive at Dallas-based Partners Real Estate, told The Dallas Morning News earlier this year, in the wake of the bombshell news that AT&T, one of the region\u2019s largest employers, was abandoning its downtown headquarters<\/a> for Plano. \u201cThey need to have a come-to-Jesus moment.\u201d <\/p>\n

Other major metro areas may be facing their own reappraisals. Of the country\u2019s 387 metropolitan statistical areas, 310 saw slower growth between 2024 and 2025 compared with the year earlier, the data showed, and many of the country\u2019s most populous areas actually saw population declines. Los Angeles County, the country\u2019s most populous, lost around 54,000 residents. In Florida, Miami-Dade and Pinellas County, in the Tampa Bay area, both lost more than 10,000 residents. In New York City, Queens County and Kings County, which include the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, also saw net losses. <\/p>\n

Those urban decreases largely stem from a drop in both international and domestic migration, according to census researchers, while the country as a whole also saw a major decline in international migration. From 2023 to 2024, the U.S. gained residents from other countries at a rate of above 8 per 1,000, but from 2024 to 2025 the rate fell to below 4 per 1,000. Large counties, which typically serve as migration magnets, were particularly impacted, and so were counties along the U.S.-Mexico border, with Laredo County registering the country\u2019s single steepest drop in population growth rate. <\/p>\n

The data is particularly resonant for Texas. While the state\u2019s population and economy have both grown for years at a rate well above the national average, lately analysts have been pointing to a slowdown in international migration \u2014 and associated labor supply challenges \u2014 as a major headwind for the state\u2019s economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cTexas\u2019 strong domestic and international in-migration helps explain why state job growth outpaces that of the nation,\u201d researchers at the Dallas Fed wrote in a report published<\/a> in the fall. But they found that, in addition to slowing the migration inflow, beginning last year the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown had created a kind of \u201cchilling effect\u201d that was keeping foreign-born Texas residents home and dampening the economy. One in five Texas businesses in the bank\u2019s survey said they expected immigration policy changes to negatively impact their hiring last year. <\/p>\n

Parts of the D-FW Metroplex, including booming Frisco<\/a>, have also been hit particularly hard by new restrictions to H-1B visas, a program intended for highly skilled immigrants that\u2019s widely used in the tech industry and higher education. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the disruption to kind of the growth model that we have, as far as I see it,\u201d Pia Orrenius, a senior economist at the Dallas Fed, said in an interview this year, referring to Texas\u2019 and D-FW\u2019s immigration slowdowns. \u201cImmigration and migration into the state is more than 50% of our growth. <\/p>\n

Economists generally remain relatively bullish on the Texas and D-FW economies, however, with the Dallas Fed recently projecting<\/a> a 1.1% state jobs growth rate in 2026 \u2014 slower than Texas\u2019 traditional 2% growth rate but a marked improvement from last year, when the state saw virtually no employment growth. <\/p>\n

While D-FW\u2019s year-over-year population increase of nearly 124,000 residents ranked second among metro areas in overall terms \u2014 ahead of greater Atlanta, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C. \u2014 the net jump still represented a downshift from the North Texas\u2019 recent growth: Between 2020 and 2024, D-FW added about 715,000 people, according to the census report, for a yearly average gain of about 179,000. <\/p>\n

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Senators appeared to be narrowing in on a endgame to resolve impasse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The D-FW area added more than 120,000 people from July 2024 to July 2025, according to a new…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":689321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,64,7583,1596,7290,18785,14052,25622,26944,31111,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-689320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-business","tag-collin-county","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-county","tag-demographics","tag-downtown-dallas","tag-future-of-north-texas-population","tag-kaufman-county","tag-population","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116310383972035259","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}