The Census Bureau recently released data on last year showing another year of population decrease. Chicago’s population dropped 0.3% between July 2022 and July 2023 falling from 2,672,660 to 2,664,452.
It is the 10th consecutive year that Chicago has recorded a population decrease and though the drop was distinctly better than the previous two years, it means that Chicago looks set to lose its position as the third-largest city in the United States if the trend keeps up.
The 8,208 population decrease is the third-largest decline of any city in the country behind just New York City and Philadelphia.
Chicago is currently the third most populous city in the United States with a 2.66 million population behind Los Angeles, California, in second with nearly 4 million people, and New York, New York is the nation’s largest city with almost 8.3 million people.
New York and Los Angeles also saw their respective population declines while Houston, which sits behind Chicago in fourth, experienced a 0.5% population growth up to 2,314,157.
Houston is one of many southern cities seeing a spike in population and threatens to overtake Chicago.
“The population growth across the South in 2023 was driven by significant numeric and percentage gains among its cities,” said Crystal Delbé, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division.
“Thirteen of the 15 fastest-growing cities were in the South, with eight in Texas alone.”
Back in 2015 estimates suggested that Houston’s population was likely to increase to between 2.5 million and 2.7 million by 2025.
The same report expected Chicago’s population to drop to around 2.5 million in the same time frame and consequently prompted predictions that Chicago would be overtaken by Houston at some point in 2025.
An analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute instead predicts that Chicago will fall behind Houston in 2035 dropping to the fourth-largest city in the United States “if population trends hold.”
