May 5, 2025

Hi everyone, my name is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics and welcome to this edition of TrendsTalk. We at ITR are your apolitical and unbiased source of economic intelligence and today I wanted to take a break from tariffs. We’ve talked a lot about tariffs and there’s even more blogs coming out on our website so please check those out. I wanted to focus on something that’s a little bit more fun, especially for I’d say for most of us, depending on where you’re located and that’s looking at some population growth numbers.

We did receive the 2024 numbers, it’s usually a few months into 2025 before they come out and we finally received those numbers. I’ll highlight some states that saw significant growth and some states that saw some concerning decline and the numbers I’ll be referencing are a four year growth rate. So I’m talking about from 2020 to 2024, where did we see the most population growth? Where did we see the least population growth? And again, I’m talking in terms of percentages over a four year time.

So let’s start with the winners. The two highest growth rates over that four year period of time was Idaho at 8.2% and Florida at 8.2%. So now again, understand these are percentages, right? The number of people that it takes for Idaho to achieve an 8.2% growth rate is a much smaller number than the number of people it takes for Florida to achieve an 8.2% growth rate. But those are the most notable four year growth rates.

Now, I do want to call out some, what I’ll say, honorable mentions. Texas comes in at 30%. place with 7% growth. Think of how many people that is moving to Texas over a four-year period of time to achieve a 7% growth rate in that Texas population. That was already very large. So it’s Idaho, it’s Florida, it’s Texas. And I call out most of the Southeast as well. We’re still seeing very attractive population growth in places like North Carolina at 5.7%, South Carolina at 6.8%, and even Georgia at 4.2%. Some very attractive population growth in that region as well. I’ll also highlight any state out west that’s around or connected to California. You look at Utah, 6.7% growth rate in Utah, 5.5% in Arizona, 4.8% in Nevada. The migration away from California continues.

And so those are the real notable states I’d call out. And why do I share that? Well, if you’re thinking about expanding your regions, opening a new branch, looking for new opportunities, population growth is a very important variable to consider. So I would argue it’s important to look at some of those states that I mentioned because their underlying economic fundamentals are going to be positive, at least from a population standpoint. You know, we often say, if you’re looking for demand, if you’re looking for labor, go where the people are. And those are clearly the states the people are targeting.

Now for the not so good news, when we look at the states that actually declined in population between 2020 and 2024, I’ll call some of these out for you. New York at minus 1.2%, West Virginia at minus 1.2%, Louisiana at minus 1.2%, those were the leaders in terms of the most decline. Then we did see Illinois at minus 0.7%, Mississippi at minus 0.5%. And finally, the last two states that declined in population were Hawaii at minus 0.4% and California at minus 0.2%.

So overall, there were six states that declined in population over that four-year period of time. Every other state grew, again, I called out the highest performers, but every other state in this country grew other than those six states over that four-year period.  So it’s very important, again, to acknowledge what this means. And again, for those states that are losing people in an already tight labor situation, that’s going to make labor even more challenging as we move forward, which can drive up some of those costs. Now, I’m not saying there still isn’t opportunity in some of those states with declining population, but it’s an important economic variable to be considering.

It’s very interesting data to look at because of the underlying assumptions. A lot of it has to do with the cost of living. You know, I highlight places like California and Hawaii as an example, the highest cost of living in the country, in California and Hawaii, which is likely driving away from some of that population growth. And it’s a similar story for places like New York. When you look at places like Mississippi and Louisiana, it’s often cited as a lack of job opportunity. That’s true for West Virginia there as well.

So it’s important as business leaders, as industry leaders that we’re evaluating where do people want to be and where’s the most demand likely going to come from? Because there’s a very different perspective in this country, depending on where you’re located. There’s so much we can dive into here, but I thought I’d call out some of these statistics because it’s always so interesting as an economist to see where people are moving, the places people are interested in, and understanding some of the implications of that.

So I hope you found this break from tariffs helpful and I’m happy to share any of this data with those of you that are interested in, we’ll likely be doing some blogs on some of these trends because of how important population growth is to the different state economies.

For now, I’ll leave you with that. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. My name is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics. Please like and subscribe to TrendsTalk wherever you listen to your podcasts, and I look forward to seeing you all in the next one. Take care for now.