Detroit's population grows for second straight year as prior estimates revised upward
Detroit's population grew for the second straight year in 2024, according to Census Bureau estimates that also revised upward the city's 2023 population, the city's latest milestone in reversing a generations-long people drain that began in 1957.
The Motor City gained nearly 7,000 people from July 1, 2023 to July 1, 2024, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday. The city's population rose from 638,914 to 645,705, an increase of more than 1%.
The census also revised last year's population data, when Detroit grew for the first time in 66 years, to reflect stronger growth than previously measured. The federal government now says the city gained more than 4,000 people between 2022 and 2023, more than double the prior estimate.
"This is where we expected to be," Mayor Mike Duggan told The Detroit News on Wednesday.
He added: "I'm glad the Census Bureau's recognizing it," referring to recent census estimates that the city legally challenged for being too low.
"This is where we should be. Detroit, you know, is bringing the young people back," Duggan said. "The numbers show we're leading the population growth in the state of Michigan. ... We've never seen numbers like this, at least not in my lifetime."
He added Detroit now moves up to the 26th most populated city in the country from 27th, past Portland and just below Boston.
The increase, notably, brought Detroit above early pandemic population levels. Its estimated population on April 1, 2020, was 639,471, per the latest updates to the 2020 decennial census. The last time the Motor City had a population above its current level was the summer of 2019. Original estimates of that time said Detroit had 670,031 people.
"A growth of 7,000 leads the state of Michigan and actually beats the national average for population growth," Duggan noted. He credited the growth of "young people" in particular but added that people are, in general, "moving back and people stopped moving out."
"We've seen a significant growth in young people moving into Detroit," the mayor said. "You see it every day. You know, 15,000 houses in the neighborhoods renovated and occupied. We've also had, you know, thousands and thousands of units built in downtown and Midtown that were new.
"But the biggest thing is, and this should matter to everybody in Michigan, we need to keep our young people in the state. And Detroit is now a place where young people want to live, want to work, want to spend time."
A combination of factors is attracting population, Duggan said: "Reducing crime, increasing jobs and building more housing, all three of those things."
During his 11 years as mayor, Duggan has often said that population growth would serve as a measure of his success.
Achieving that goal last year, he said, was among the reasons he chose not to seek a fourth term as mayor. Duggan, a Democrat, is now making a 2026 gubernatorial run as an independent.
"I would never have left until the population started to grow, and we achieved that," Duggan told The News in November.
The updated increases from last year and this year is "obviously good news" that also shows the city and the Census Bureau are now working together much better, said demographer Kurt Metzger, founder and director emeritus of Data Driven Detroit.
"It's kind of a culmination of a lot of work on the city's part working with the Census Bureau to help the bureau understand housing in the city," Metzger said.
Detroit filed lawsuits challenging census methodology that relies on housing units to count city populations. The city claimed the formula incorrectly assumed that every demolition of a vacant, uninhabitable structure represents the loss of a household, ignoring families who renovate an uninhabitable house. Detroit officials had to show census officials that there is much more renovated housing in the city compared to other cities, he said.
Detroit’s growth between the summer of 2023 and 2024 exceeded every other city in Michigan by a significant margin. The next closest city was Grand Rapids, which gained 1,847 over that time, according to census data.
Rounding out the top five in total growth were Troy (a 1,286-person increase, or 1.5%), Lansing (1,286, or 1%) and Farmington Hills (993, or 1.2%).
In percentage terms, the municipality with the largest growth in Michigan last year was Tekonsha Village in Calhoun County, about 13 miles south of Marshall. The village added 54 people, an increase of 8%, to reach a total population of 724.
The cities with the largest population drops last year were East Lansing (196), Saginaw (171) and Port Huron (131). That represented a roughly 0.4% decline for each city.
Previous census releases have shown that Michigan as a whole grew by 57,000 (or 0.6%) last year, its best mark in decades. Foreign immigration across the state buoyed that growth, with all but one of the state's 83 counties seeing increases in their number of foreign-born residents.
The Thursday release on municipalities did not include breakdowns by race, ethnicity or country of origin, however, so it was not immediately clear if Detroit's growth was consistent with that trend.
Though Detroit's year-to-year bounce was impressive in light of decades-long trends, it did not crack the top 15 in total population gain or growth rate across the country.
The leader for total gain nationally was New York City, which added more than 87,000 people last year. The fastest-growing city was Princeton City, Texas, which saw a 30.6% population increase.
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit's population grows for second straight year as prior estimates revised upward
