r/USCensus2020

Even as the latest U.S. Census Bureau data shows Detroit's population grew for the past three years, city officials contended Thursday the federal agency is still undercounting 25,000 residents and plans to sue to correct the alleged flaw.

The city said it will file a suit Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit that contends that one of the formulas used by the Census Bureau that relies on county population growth is skewing the city's recent growth. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2026/05/14/detroits-population-undercounted-25k-census-bureau-sheffield/90077552007/

There are lots of problems with looking at census data on a city limits basis (which is how the census presents it). One issue is that cities have arbitrary municipal limits; for example, San Francisco is only ~46 square miles whereas Jacksonville, FL is ~747 square miles. Comparing such wildly different land areas is obviously difficult.

So I had some fun with the Census population estimates, and took the 50 cities with the largest absolute two-year population increase, and then divided that increase by the square miles within the city limits (using the land area, i.e., excluding square miles covered by water).

Why did I use two-year data? Because one-year data is way too noisy (especially with Census estimates), and going back beyond two years relates back to the COVID-era population losses. I'm mostly interested in how cities are growing in the post-COVID era.

The results (again, looking at only the cities within the top 50 absolute largest growers) are as follows:

1. Newark
2. NYC
3. Seattle
4. McKinney, Texas (Dallas Suburb)
5. Miami
6. New Braunfels, Texas (San Antonio Suburb)
7. San Francisco
8. Washington DC
9. Port St Lucie, FL
10. Charlotte

Take away from this what you will.

I should note that the picture is much different if you go back 5 years to 2020. Although NYC/SF are rebounding, they're still below their pre-COVID populations (i.e., they have a net population loss since 2020).

p.s. A note on %s (since some people complain about using absolute population changes vs % changes): If I used percentages, this would generate nothing but small cities no one has ever heard of (I think "Buckeye City" jumps to #1). Absolutes are, of course, not perfect. But neither are percentages. Are we really going to put more weight on a few thousand people moving to Buckeye City than 150k moving to NYC in two years just because Buckeye City's % is better?

Edit: Source Census for population changes can be found here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-national-detail.html#v2025

Nameplay.org recently gathered census demographic data for the US, so I thought I'd aggregate some of the data in a table and share it with you guys! These are the top ten names per sex that are predominantly used by a certain race/ethnicity according to the 2020 US census. All recorded instances of a name in the table are at least 70% dominated by the given race/ethnicity. This data is for all ages, not just babies.

If you want to view more, you can go to https://nameplay.org/list/by-name-attribute and scroll all the way down to "demographic concentration".

What a pain! Feel lucky if you did not receive this.