The State Where Population Has Grown the Most Since the Pandemic

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 22, 8:30AM EST

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The State Where Population Has Grown the Most Since the Pandemic — © vkbhat / E+ via Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic had a staggering effect on the growth of the U.S. population. It dropped to just 0.1% in the year that ended July 1, 2021, according to the Census Bureau. That was the slowest rate in American history. The last time the population increased by less than a million was in 1937, at the depths of the Great Depression. Other than deaths from the virus, low birth rates and slowing international migration were the largest contributing factors.

Ten states actually posted declines in population. The largest of these was the 1.6% drop in New York, which took the number of residents to 20,154,933.

More than 30 states did post population growth over the period. To identify the state that has grown the most since the pandemic, 24/7 Wall St. looked at the one-year population change from July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Some states where the population increased during the pandemic were growing anyway as the result of the longtime trend of Americans moving out of Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio and Northeastern states like New York and heading to warmer climates (and places with lower taxes) such as Arizona, Florida and Texas. In addition, some people chose new states where COVID-19 mandates were nonexistent or less severe, such as South Dakota, as well as Florida and Texas.

The state with the largest increase in population was Idaho. Here are the details:

One-year change in population: 2.9%
Population estimate July 1, 2020: 1,847,772
Population estimate July 1, 2021: 1,900,923
Average new COVID-19 cases, past 7 days: 2,749

Click here to see the 31 states where populations have risen since the pandemic.
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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.