D.C. population grew since 2021, reversing pandemic-related decline
“We’re still digging out of the pandemic in some ways,” said William H. Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the census data and its impact on the Washington metro area. “There’s still a lot of deaths. Fertility has gone up a little bit. The big outlier is a big infusion that we’ve had in the last year … due to immigration. And that’s affecting all states — all states had more immigration this year than last year.”
The U.S. population increased 0.4 percent from 2020 to 2021, to approximately 333.3 million, the bureau said. That gain followed the slowest annual population growth since 1900, according to Frey’s analysis.
The bureau said a net increase in migration added 1,010,923 people to the U.S. population, nearly tripling the previous year’s net of 376,029 people. The recent influx suggests migration patterns are returning to pre-pandemic levels, the agency said.
The District’s population grew by 3,012 people, or 0.5 percent, from 2021 to 2022, compared with a 0.3 percent decline the previous year, Frey’s analysis found. The increase was well below the go-go years of the previous decade, when the District’s population grew as much as 2.5 percent annually, Frey said.
Virginia gained about 26,254 people, or 0.3 percent, compared with a 0.2 percent increase the previous year, while Maryland lost 9,950 people, or 0.2 percent, from the previous year.
