By Joshua Fechter
DALLAS — Texas’ population growth slowed significantly last year amid a nationwide slowdown in the number of newcomers moving to the United States, but still topped the rest of the country for adding new residents, new U.S. Census Bureau data show.
Texas added 391,243 residents in 2025, the most of any state, according to census figures released Tuesday — bringing the state’s population to 31.7 million. But the Lone Star State grew by 1.2%, its slowest clip since 2021, after years of red-hot growth following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of that slowdown comes from a steep drop-off in the number of immigrants moving to Texas, driven in part by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The state added 167,475 newcomers from abroad in 2025. That’s a 48% decline from the previous year, when 319,569 immigrants, documented and undocumented, moved to Texas. The drop was not as staggering as the national decrease.
“I think the implication is our economic growth isn’t probably going to be as hearty as what we’ve seen historically,” said Lloyd Potter, the state demographer.
Nationally, the population grew by less than half a percentage point, bringing the total U.S. population to 341.8 million. Net international migration to the United States fell by about 55% to 1.3 million in 2025 from 2.7 million the previous year, a “historic decline” that drove the overall slowdown in U.S. population growth last year, said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau.
That migration could fall even further. The agency projects net international migration to the U.S. could further fall to 321,000 this year.
Texas saw fewer newcomers coming from other states, too. Some 67,299 people moved to Texas from elsewhere in the country in 2025, behind North Carolina, which saw 84,064 newcomers from other states. That’s a stark drop off from Texas’ peak years of poaching residents from competing states; in 2022, Texas added 222,154 residents via net domestic migration.
It’s possible the well of potential new Texans living in other states has run relatively dry for now, meaning that people who want to move to Texas have already moved here, Potter said. Broader economic uncertainty may also be prompting people to stay put, he said.
“People are a little skittish in terms of moving and doing anything drastic,” Potter said.
Even as it grows, people are still leaving Texas, which sent more residents to other states than any other state in the country in 2024.
Texas came in fourth in terms of the pace of population growth in 2025, down from the top spot the previous year. South Carolina was the fastest-growing state last year, followed by Idaho and North Carolina. Texas gained 157,111 residents through natural change, meaning the number by which births outnumbered deaths.
Texas saw 390,203 births compared with 232,492 deaths last year.
Since 2020, Texas has added some 2.6 million residents, the most of any other state, with more than two-thirds of that growth coming from people moving to Texas from elsewhere in the country or from abroad.
There’s a potential bright spot in slower growth, Potter said: Local officials may now have more breathing room to catch up on infrastructure needs brought on by the state’s population boom.
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