Detroit’s Wayne County Still Shrinking

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Detroit’s Wayne County Still Shrinking

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Detroit has been called one of America’s dead cities. Its population peaked in 1950 at 1,849,568. According to Census figures, it had dropped to 620,376 in 2022. The county in which Detroit is the largest city lost population again in 2023. These are the cities where the middle class is shrinking. 

The new U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2023 estimates of population showed Detroit’s Wayne County lost 7,772 people between July 1, 2022, and July 1, 2023. That was the ninth-largest drop among all US counties, bringing Wayne County’s population to 1,751,169. In 2020, Wayne County’s population was 1,793,914, so the drop last year was not an anomaly. Wayne County’s population hit a record 2,666,751 in 1970.

The last time the Census posted detailed data on Wayne County was 2022. Its population was similar to Detroit’s: 55 percent White. Thirty-eight percent were Black. The median household income was $57,223. That compares to a nationwide figure of $74,580. Wayne County’s poverty rate was 21.2%, which is slightly less than double the national number,

Detroit is in trouble demographically, and So is Wayne County, the county it is part of.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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