(Photo by Mr.TinDC)
The District of Columbia added 10,793 residents to the city last year—continuing the population’s upward trajectory, but at a slower rate than in the beginning of the decade. The city’s new total population: 681,170.
The Census Bureau released its revised population estimates going back to 2010. Here’s the latest numbers, which show the growth pattern in recent years:
2010: 605,183
2011: 620,477 (+15,294)
2012: 635,327 (+14,850)
2013: 649,165 (13,838)
2014: 659,005 (+9,840)
2015: 670,377 (+11,372)
2016: 681,170 (+10,793)
Still, D.C.’s growth rate of 1.61 percent made it the ninth-fastest growing “state,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau (D.C. was third last year, but that used a higher population estimate for 2015).
A report from the CFO’s office in 2014, when D.C. first logged a significant drop in the growth rate, noted a “sharp decline in net domestic inmigration”—fewer Americans moving to the city, or more leaving it. “It is fair to conclude at this point that population cannot be assumed to continue to increase in the future as it has in the recent past,” the report said.
If the trend holds, though, the city is easily likely to surpass 800,000 within the next two decades (the city’s zenith was in 1943, with a total population of 900,000).
Utah topped the list of fastest growing states at 2 percent, and most of the others were in the South and West. The U.S. as a whole grew by 0.7 percent to 323.1 million. And your obligatory annual reminder: Wyoming and Vermont, which each have two senators and a voting member of Congress, both have smaller populations than our fair disenfranchised District.
This story has been updated to correct the city’s record population number.
Rachel Sadon