9 American Cities Losing the Most People

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 11:31AM EST · Published Mar 26, 9:05AM EDT

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9 American Cities Losing the Most People — © Thinkstock

The U.S. Census Bureau released its analysis of population change among the country’s 371 metropolitan areas. The period of the analysis covered July 1, 2014, to July 1, 2015. While some cities posted spectacular growth, nine cities had counts of population attrition above 2,000.

One of the largest cities in America lost the most people. The population of Chicago dropped 6,263. Old cities across the rust belt made up a large portion of the list. Flint lost 2,085 and Pittsburgh lost 5,051. Youngstown lost 3,625, while Cleveland lost 3,269.

The balance of the nine cities that lost the most population were Farmington, N.M., at 5,253; Elizabeth Town, Ky. at 3,291; Charleston, W.V., at 2,201; and Hinesville, Ga., at 2,199.

Eight cities lost 1% or more of their populations over the same period. Farmington lost 4.2%; Hinesville 2.6%; Elizabeth Town 2.2%; Pine Bluff, Ark., 1.1%; and Watertown, N.Y., 1.1%. Decatur, Ill., lost 1.0%, as did Charleston and Albany, Ga.
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Some cities had staggering additions to their populations, particularly several in Texas, where four metro areas added a combined 400,000. According to the Census analysis:

The Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro areas added about 159,000 and 145,000 residents, respectively — the largest gains of any metro areas in the nation. Two additional Texas metro areas adjacent to each other — Austin-Round Rock and San Antonio-New Braunfels — were each also among the 16 nationwide to gain 50,000 or more people over the period.

These four Texas metro areas collectively added about 412,000 people. Texas as a whole gained about 490,000.

Several other cities added large numbers of people. The population of Atlanta rose by 95,431, the third most of any U.S. city. In fourth place, Phoenix added 87,988. The largest metro area, New York, added 87,186, and the nation’s second largest metro, Los Angeles, added 85,671.

Methodology: The Census Bureau develops county, metro area and micro area population estimates by measuring population change since the most recent census. The Census Bureau uses births, deaths, administrative records and survey data to develop estimates of population.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.