Census: Texas Home to Fastest-Growing Cities

According to a press release from the U.S. Census Bureau, Southern cities continue to lead population growth, with Georgetown, Texas seeing a population increase of 14.4 percent in 2022. “The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX metro area had the highest numeric increase in population between 2021 and 2022 of any U.S. metro area, with an annual jump of 170,396 people, followed by the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX metro area which added 124,281 residents over the same time period.”

The press release adds, “Texas was the only state that had more than three cities on both the 15 fastest-growing large cities and towns by numeric change and by percent change lists.”

Other insights: Despite the dispersal of people from big cities to smaller towns, “Ten U.S. metro areas had populations of at least 5 million in 2022, with six of the ten increasing in population between 2021 and 2022.”

Meanwhile, ‘micropolitan’ statistical areas—defined by the Census as “areas that have at least one urban cluster of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties”—grew by roughly 0.1 percent in 2022, with almost half of micro areas experiencing population growth.

“The nation’s housing stock grew by about 1.6 million units between July 2021 and July 2022, reaching a total of 143.8 million with an annual growth rate of 1.2%,” a 0.2 percent increase from the previous year.