Washington — Foreign immigration across the state buoyed Michigan’s best-in-decades population growth last year, according to federal data released Thursday.
In a year when the Michigan population increased by about 57,000 (or 0.6%), all but one of the state’s 83 counties saw increases in their number of foreign-born residents. The only one that did not — Arenac County— had zero net change in that metric.
The state also saw significant growth in Metro Detroit to eclipse losses from the previous year, continued growth in the Grand Rapids area and limited population decline in rural areas. Altogether, the data release presents a mostly positive report card for Michigan as it continues a concerted effort to grow its population by retaining residents, attracting new ones and stemming losses from deaths exceeding births.
“The news is good right now,” said Kurt Metzger, a demographer and director emeritus of Data Driven Detroit. But he urged officials at every level of government across the state to continue working on the issue.
“Yes, the population went up between ’23 and ’24. Wasn’t that wonderful? And we all benefited. But don’t get cocky, because it could go down tomorrow,” he said in a phone interview.
More: Key group fuels Michigan population growth in 2024, census shows
Previous Census data showed that Michigan’s population reached a historic high of 10.1 million in 2024, keeping Michigan as the 10th most populous state. The new county-level data shed light on more specific details of that growth and show that Michigan’s population trends were consistent with national ones.
“Increasingly, population growth in metro areas is being shaped by international migration,” said Kristie Wilder, a demographer in the Census Bureau’s Population Division. “While births continue to contribute to overall growth, rising net international migration is offsetting the ongoing net domestic outmigration we see in many of these areas.”
Metro Detroit’s Oakland, Wayne and Macomb counties — all of which have concentrated pockets of immigrant, largely Arab-American populations — accounted for three of the top four spots in total population growth from July 2023 to July 2024. Combined, those counties grew by more than 30,600 people.
Metzger pointed out that Wayne County, which grew by almost 8,700 people, had its first population gain since the early 1990s.
The new data release also reflects significant revisions to population estimates from past years, mostly due to the Census Bureau expanding how it measures immigration. The revisions were especially significant for Metro Detroit. Original estimates for Wayne County, for example, suggested a population loss of nearly 8,000 people between 2022 and 2023. That loss is now estimated at 640.
After Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids-area Kent and Ottawa counties were the next biggest hub for growth last year with a combined increase of more than 10,500 residents. Three other counties (Washtenaw, Ingham and Kalamazoo) had population jumps of more than 1,000.
Nat Zorach, who teaches at Michigan State University’s School of Planning, Design and Construction, said the growth for Kent, Washtenaw and Ingham counties could be an early sign of success for local zoning changes that encourage more new housing construction and conversion of single-family homes into multi-unit properties.
He noted that local governments in Grand Rapids (Kent), Ann Arbor (Washtenaw) and Lansing (Ingham) have all pursued zoning reforms in recent years.
In total, 55 counties saw population increases, 27 saw declines and one (Iosco) had net zero growth. Notably, no county lost more than 163 people. Zorach suggested that the relative steadiness of populations in more rural counties could be due to post-pandemic lifestyle trends.
“I think that there is an attractiveness to small-town life that is probably substantially driven by the fact that it’s cheap to live there,” he said in a phone interview. Zorach also noted that there has been a years-long trend of county populations centralizing in the area’s largest municipality.
“Tiny towns get smaller, but the county seat might grow in a small amount,” he said.
Metzger, however, warned that population watchers should not take too much from last year’s data. “There is a stabilization, but I would hesitate saying that this is a trend,” he said. “The rural areas have been able to hold on. I just worry about where they go next.”
He recalled speaking to a group of rural hospital administrators in Michigan several years ago about their institutions’ long-term viability. “I asked if they were part of any countywide or multi-county efforts around populations, and they were like deer in the headlights,” the demographer said.
The Growing Michigan Together Council, a group convened by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer that spent five months in 2023 strategizing on how to boost the state’s population, did not include many specific recommendations or plans for rural areas. The word “rural” appears three times in the 86-page report.
That report mostly focused on improving Michigan’s education system, encouraging business innovation and addressing housing and infrastructure deficiencies across the state. It also called immigration a “bright spot hidden in Michigan’s current population trend.”
While international immigration contributed to growth across Michigan last year, domestic population indicators were still negative — albeit less so than in past years.
Census data released in December showed that deaths, while decreasing from the previous year, still exceeded births in Michigan last year by 2,855. In total, 72 of Michigan’s 83 counties saw more births than deaths, according to the Census Bureau, or just shy of 88% of counties.
But there were some pockets of what demographers call natural growth, defined as births exceeding deaths.
Kent County had the strongest natural growth last year, followed by Wayne County. The largest natural decline was in Genesee County, home to Flint.
Across the state, net domestic migration losses fell by more than half from the previous year, dropping from -17,446 to -7,656. Net domestic migration refers to the number of people who left Michigan for another U.S. state minus the number of people who moved to Michigan from another state.
“That just shows the importance that immigration plays in Michigan’s future,” Metzger said.
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
