Southern States Gain Most From Domestic Migration in 2023: Census

The majority of the South’s population growth came from domestic migration, according to census estimates.

Aerial view of Austin, Texas. Getty Images

While foreign immigrants continue to drive the overall population growth of the United States, red states gained new residents primarily by attracting hundreds of thousands of Americans from other parts of the country, the latest national census data suggest.

The nation added 1.6 million people from July 2022 to July 2023, pushing the overall population to 334.9 million, up 0.5 percent from the year earlier, according to estimates released on Dec. 19 by the U.S. Census Bureau.