The US Census Bureau thread

[mhays]

Seattle up 1.5%, the most for any major northern city. They did drop us to 1.8% for the previous year however.

[craigs]

It looks like Los Angeles saw a population drop of 3,621 residents, or 0.09%, between the updated 2024 estimate and the 2025 estimate.

[Age of Whamsies]

The city that stands out the most to me in this data is St. Louis city. My god are those numbers bad.

With a population of 278,144, STL is now down 67.5% from its peak population of 856,796 (1950), and has now fallen further than Detroit ever fell (at its lowest, Detroit was down 65.4% from peak).

Of 57 US MSAs with populations over 1 million, STL is the fastest shrinking anchor city, in both the 2024-2025 (down 0.8%) and 2020-2025 (down 7.8%!!) timeframes.

This leaves STL as the 80th largest city in the US, with a lower population than, for example, Madison, WI or Anchorage AK.

Given its current negative trajectory (which has remained remarkably constant for decades), and the trajectory of many of the other cities in its population class (e.g. McKinney, TX or Henderson, NV), it is highly unlikely that STL will still be in the top 100 cities by the 2030 census.

This would make it only the second city in US history, after Charleston SC, to have once been in the top 5 and then fallen out of the top 100. (It should be noted that Charleston was ravaged by a war, suffering one of the longest continuous shelling campaigns in military history, at over 550 days, followed by a near total evacuation and burning by confederate forces. STL has no such excuse, although a visitor would be forgiven for concluding that the city must have suffered something similar.)

[Crawford]

To be fair, the annual estimates are reliably inaccurate. It won't be clear if St. Louis is performing worse than similar cities until 2030.

[plinko]

Arizona now has 14 cities over 100,000 in population, including 3 that have reached that in the last 5 years. With the incorporation on San Tan Valley on July 1st that will be 15 and likely Queen Creek getting there before 2030. Crazy.

Meanwhile, landlocked Tempe just inches closer to 200,000. Considering it hasn’t grown in area since the mid 70s and yet has more than doubled in population I would say that’s pretty impressive.

[Age of Whamsies]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It won't be clear if St. Louis is performing worse than similar cities until 2030.

Define similar cities? Frankly, I don't really care how STL is performing compared to similar cities, if the similar cities are Memphis, Youngstown, and Gary (in the past I would've thrown in Detroit or Cleveland, but those two seem to be doing great lately). The numbers show STL as dead last out of the 57 anchor cities of million+ metros. Perhaps its only 55th.. Yay?

Originally Posted by Crawford

To be fair, the annual estimates are reliably inaccurate.

You're right, but there's a roughly equal chance of an overestimate as there is of an underestimate. So we can nitpick over whether STL has shrunk by 1% or 0.6% in the last year, and over whether STL is dead last or, say, 54th out of 57th in anchor cities, but the numbers aren't good.

And based on the revised estimates for 2020-2024, which give an average annual growth of -1.61%, I would guess that the new numbers showing STL shrank by only 0.8% in 2024-25 is almost certainly an underestimate of the loss. (edit.. especially given the tornado. If I had to guess, 2025 doesn't seem like a year where the steady >1.5%/y trickle of population loss would suddenly halve to 0.8%)

[Bonsai Tree]

The catastrophic disaster of the tornado that hit the city in 2025 caused extreme devastation across a wide swath of the north of the city. There really isn't a ton left of North St Louis at this point. Other sections of the city are up and coming, but not enough to outweigh massive declines elsewhere. Not to mention it doesn't have a strong downtown- which is something the city is hoping to reverse in the coming decade.

I'm bullish on STL's downtown. The region needs a real urban experience and downtown offers the best ability to achieve this (not Clayton lol). Perhaps it will be able to turn a corner in the 2030s with downtown investment.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Age of Whamsies

Define similar cities?

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, etc.

Originally Posted by Age of Whamsies

(in the past I would've thrown in Detroit or Cleveland, but those two seem to be doing great lately).

As with St. Louis, neither Detroit nor Cleveland have shown official population growth in like 70 years. You're basing your conclusions ("doing great") on estimates that are almost certainly inaccurate. Cleveland with +2,000 and St. Louis with -2000 in estimates that are sometimes wildly (like 10%) off is likely meaningless in the end.

Look at the 2020 official numbers and compare to the 2019 estimates. Oops, just a half million off here and there.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Bonsai Tree

I'm bullish on STL's downtown. The region needs a real urban experience and downtown offers the best ability to achieve this (not Clayton lol). Perhaps it will be able to turn a corner in the 2030s with downtown investment.

IMO Downtown STL — and does not have good short-term prospects. Much worse shape than Detroit and Cleveland. And the region has proven it can get by w/o downtown.

That said, I think it's reasonable to argue that STL proper is overall a bit healthier than Detroit and Cleveland. Much higher home values, greater share of regional wealth and a number of healthy urban neighborhoods. No CWE in Detroit and Cleveland, and no real prospects either.

[Age of Whamsies]

Originally Posted by Bonsai Tree

The catastrophic disaster of the tornado that hit the city in 2025 caused extreme devastation across a wide swath of the north of the city. There really isn't a ton left of North St Louis at this point. Other sections of the city are up and coming, but not enough to outweigh massive declines elsewhere. Not to mention it doesn't have a strong downtown- which is something the city is hoping to reverse in the coming decade.

I'm bullish on STL's downtown. The region needs a real urban experience and downtown offers the best ability to achieve this (not Clayton lol). Perhaps it will be able to turn a corner in the 2030s with downtown investment.

Yes. I visited my mom after the tornado, and holy —. Forest park lost about 1/3 of its trees. The previously healthy parts of north st louis now look like.. the rest of north st louis.

I'm also bullish on downtown in the long run. Very long run. Sort of like how a Roman might have felt about Rome in the 500s. "Its got good bones"

But I do think unfortunately STLs population loss is likely to continue for a while, and accelerate somewhat in the 2030s. STL is a very old city. A lot of neighborhoods in the city have almost no families, just mostly empty-nest boomers and silent gens who grew up in STL in the 40s/50s when it was a thriving city (literally the same size as San Francisco is today and 75% as dense). They stayed, but their kids left for the burbs and their grandkids left the region entirely. And many of them would've left, if not for the fact that their property values have fallen so low that they are stuck. So starting in the 2030s, a huge grey wave of boomers will be leaving their homes in STL and moving in with their kids or into retirement homes closer to their kids, which means either to the burbs or to other cities. Many many houses will be falling into the hands of kids who don't want them and will struggle to sell them.

[Age of Whamsies]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, etc.

As with St. Louis, neither Detroit nor Cleveland have shown official population growth in like 70 years. You're basing your conclusions ("doing great") on estimates that are almost certainly inaccurate. Cleveland with +2,000 and St. Louis with -2000 in estimates that are sometimes wildly (like 10%) off is likely meaningless in the end.

Look at the 2020 official numbers and compare to the 2019 estimates. Oops, just a half million off here and there.

My "doing great" statement re: Detroit and Cleveland was mild sarcasm.

My point still stands; STL may or may not actually be dead last, but trying to decide where it stands among its peers when its peers are Detroit and Cleveland is just shuffling chairs on the titanic. Things are looking very grim for STL.

Lets ignore all the data since 2020 for a second, since you don't seem to think its even worth looking at (and perhaps youre right, and this entire conversation is pointless, but we can come back to that). As of 2020, STL had 301,578 residents. That's down 64.8% from peak; the second largest percentage decline of a major US city, after only Detroit. Now I don't know Detroit very well, but I do know St Louis, and Detroit has some things going for it demographically that STL simply does not. STL has no major immigrant communities at the moment, for example (the Hill is almost entirely american-born people now, the large bosnian migration was a 90s/2000s thing, etc), whereas Detroit certainly does. Detroit also has the auto industry, which continues to require a minimum (although gradually decreasing, with automation) number of jobs in the low hundreds of thousands. STL has no such industrial anchor. Its previously globally-relevant aerospace industry has been reduced to a single aircraft in limited production, the F-18.

It could be that all the estimates from 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 are wrong, and in fact some other city has been doing worse than STL this whole time. But I doubt it. I can't think of what city it would be.

[iheartthed]

St. Louis missed the fallout from the early 2000s recessions and financial crashes. St. Louis tended to have steeper decennial population losses than Cleveland or Detroit up until the 2000s. But a huge divergence showed up in the 2010 census from typical patterns:

[The North One]

Acting like the official counts are somehow gospel compared to the estimates is —. Especially when Detroit got severely under-counted by census in 2020 with plenty of data to prove it.

[iheartthed]

Official counts are literally gospel.

[meh]

Originally Posted by Age of Whamsies

Forest park lost about 1/3 of its trees.

No it didn't.

As of early 2026, Forest Park in St. Louis is home to approximately 44,000 to 47,000 trees, a figure that is actively being restored following a significant tornado in May 2025 that damaged or destroyed over 3,000 to 5,200 trees. Forest Park Forever and City crews are working to plant thousands of new trees to enhance canopy resilience, with recovery efforts ongoing. —Google

Originally Posted by Age of Whamsies

The previously healthy parts of north st louis now look like.. the rest of north st louis.

No they don't. Most of the "previously healthy parts" are to the west of the tornado path. The majority of the damage was in Fountain Park, The Ville, Greater Ville, O'Fallon, and College Hill. Of those neighborhoods, only O'Fallon might qualify as "previously healthy". In total about 5000 structures were damaged, about 1000 of those are beyond repair, and a substantial portion of those were already vacant/derelict.


https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/tornado-storm-damage-st-louis/

And regarding the census estimates:


https://urbanstl.com/2020-census-t9745-s1350.html


https://www.firstalert4.com/2026/02/16/f...nge-census-population-count-experts-say/




Take a breath and tone down the bellyaching. It's not helpful.

[Crawford]

St. Louis, at street level, is genuinely much creepier-looking than Detroit and Cleveland, since there are tons of vacant buildings. It kinda looks like Detroit 20-30 years ago, with all the boarded-up buildings.

Detroit went on a demolition —, which made the streetscape safer and much less blighted, but also suburbanized a lot of the city. St. Louis either doesn't have the money or will to mass-demolish, which could be a good thing if the city ever revitalizes. At least they have more intact, salvageable stock.

But for now, North STL looks much more intimidating than even the worst parts of the East Side of Detroit. Detroit, despite the stereotype, does not have many vacant buildings anymore, just tons of empty lots.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by The North One

Acting like the official counts are somehow gospel compared to the estimates is —. Especially when Detroit got severely under-counted by census in 2020 with plenty of data to prove it.

True!

Both are inaccurate, with their own vulnerabilities. The debate is how much.

[Crawford]

Everything is "inaccurate" to a degree. But the decennial counts are the official counts. The annual estimates don't actually have any function except public reporting, and the annual estimates are revised before the next annual estimate.

[meh]

Originally Posted by Crawford

St. Louis, at street level, is genuinely much creepier-looking than Detroit and Cleveland, since there are tons of vacant buildings. It kinda looks like Detroit 20-30 years ago, with all the boarded-up buildings.

Huh? There are not "tons" of vacant buildings outside of the North Side. They are here and there on the South Side and almost non-existent in the Central Corridor. I've seen parts of Philadelphia that are creepier.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by meh

Huh? There are not "tons" of vacant buildings outside of the North Side. They are here and there on the South Side and almost non-existent in the Central Corridor. I've seen parts of Philadelphia that are creepier.

Yes, the worst abandoned neighborhoods are almost all on the North Side. Not sure what you mean by "outside the North Side". Half of the city has large-scale abandonment. That's a pretty big chunk. There's also some on the Southeast Side, but not as much.

This is likely better than vacant lots. At least STL has the potential for infill.