Anti-ICE protest at UW-Milwaukee
Dozens of UW-Milwaukee students marched around campus Feb. 3 to protest ICE and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Wisconsin’s population is on the rise, but the rate of growth has slowed over the past year amid a plunge in international migration to the state, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
As of July 2025, Wisconsin had 5,972,787 residents, the Census Bureau reported Jan. 27. That’s about 15,000 residents – or about 0.26% – more than in 2024. That growth rate is nearly half what it was the year before and the lowest of the post-pandemic years so far.
Wisconsin is not alone in the trend. Nationwide population growth also slowed significantly in 2025 due to a dip in international migration. The year saw President Donald Trump begin a sweeping crackdown on immigration, which has involved everything from halting refugee programs to revoking protected status for hundreds of thousands of migrants.
In Wisconsin, the latest estimates show the number of international migrants coming to the state fell by more than 62% in 2025.
Here’s what else the Census Bureau report found.
Wisconsin’s population growth rate falls to lowest since pandemic
After several years of post-pandemic recovery, Wisconsin’s population growth in 2025 was its lowest since 2021, according to Census Bureau estimates.
The state’s 0.26% population growth rate was down from about 0.45% in 2023 and 2024, and 0.36% from 2022. Nationally, population growth halved last year, with the country’s population growing by 0.5%, or 1.8 million residents, compared to 1%, or 3.2 million residents, in 2024.
Various projections have predicted a long-term decline of Wisconsin’s population. In early 2025, the Department of Administration projected most Wisconsin counties would face a shrinking population by 2050, with an estimated statewide loss of nearly 200,000 residents.
Milwaukee County, though, defied these expectations when its population grew for the first time in a decade in 2024. The county’s population reached just under 925,000 residents as of July 1, 2024, which was up by 2,880 people, or 0.31%, from the prior year. The slight growth came after the county lost about 15,000 residents between 2020 and 2024 – the most of any Wisconsin county in that time period.
The Census Bureau has not yet released county population data for 2025.
More: Milwaukee logged lowest number of births on record in 2025, what’s behind the trend
After reaching record levels in 2024, international migration plunges
For both Wisconsin and the country, a rapid decline in international migration is driving the slowdown in population growth.
The drop comes after migration to Wisconsin reached the highest level in two decades in 2024, largely spurred by people moving to the state from other countries, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Between July 2023 and June 2024, Wisconsin saw about 19,300 international migrants and about 5,800 domestic migrants move to the state.
In contrast, between June 2024 and July 2025, the number of international migrants dropped to 7,200 – the lowest since 2020. Nationwide, the number of international migrants fell by more than 50% from 2.7 million to 1.3 million last year.
The latter half of that yearlong period saw the Trump administration start its nationwide crackdown on immigration, including in Wisconsin.
For several years, global unrest drove people to the U.S. and Wisconsin: The fall of Kabul in Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a national and local influx of refugees from those countries. Biden-era sponsorship of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela also allowed more legal immigrants, and Milwaukee in particular became a hub for Burmese refugees from Myanmar.
In his first few weeks in office, Trump issued a slew of executive orders on immigration, including indefinitely suspending federal refugee programs. More recently, the Trump administration announced Jan. 14 it would stop processing visas from 75 countries, halting the legal immigration process for hundreds of local immigrants and refugees in Milwaukee.
The curbing of international migration comes as some economists and population experts have argued that more immigrants will be key to growing the economy in Milwaukee and Wisconsin – especially with a declining birth rate and projections of a shrinking population.
Midwest sees domestic migration grow for the first time since pandemic
Despite the dip in international migration, the Midwest was the only region of the country where all states gained population last year, the Census Bureau reported.
It’s a change from when the region saw a steep population decline in 2021, followed by small growth in 2022, and then steadier growth each year after that. The past year was the first time this decade that the Midwest saw positive domestic net migration, meaning more people moved to the Midwest from other U.S. states than moved away.
Through domestic migration, the Midwest gained 16,000 residents last year, compared to net losses of more than 175,000 residents in 2021 and 2022.
Still, Midwest states were not immune to the effects of the immigration decline: The region’s population grew by about 244,000 residents in 2025, compared to about 386,000 in 2024.
