The Bureau released its 2022 estimates for all cities in the USA just a few weeks ago. Looking “locally” only, we have several quite interesting data points to share. First, a caveat: these estimates are not only updated but revised retroactively each year. So any conclusions have to be taken with at most two grains of salt, for now anyway. Figure 1 below shows the top 10 cities statewide for estimated population increase from 2020 (Census) to 2022 (July 1 estimate date). Five of them (the orange shading) are in the 11-county ARC area. Two other notable things: (a) the top gainers are certainly not the largest cities in the state, and (b) the gains have not been that dramatic –relatively– over the period. This trend “jibes” with the migration downturns driven by COVID job drops and housing supply constraints mixed with price run-ups. Figure 2 drills down to just the ARC  11-county area top 10 gainers 2020-22.  ARC’s representatives on the statewide leaders list (obviously) reappear on ARC’s list of top gainers, and are joined by five other area cities at the bottom of the table, each of these in a different county across the region. As with Figure 1, the bigger cities aren’t on the list.

And why aren’t some of the larger cities in our 11-county area net gainers for the 2020-2022 period. Figure 3 offers an explanation– there were estimated declines in many of our largest cities 2020-2021. Figure 4 does show a strong “bounce-back” in the 2021-22 period, but not enough to “compensate” for the slowdown of 2020-21 and make these larger cities of the region into areas with strong population increase over the entire period.

To close, there has been a great amount of “up and down” in this two year estimates span, and more declines than might have been expected in the 2020-2021 period (even considering the influence of COVID on urban attractiveness). But only 14 cities in the ARC’s 11 counties lost population in both periods. And Figure 5 below shows that overall declines 2020-22 have occurred only in a few cities, and been limited in scope.