{"id":791426,"date":"2026-07-09T22:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/791426\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:02:16","slug":"torontos-population-whiplash-leaves-it-at-the-bottom-of-the-pack-among-canadian-and-u-s-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/791426\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto\u2019s population whiplash leaves it at the bottom of the pack among Canadian and U.S. cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Pedestrians cross the street in downtown Toronto on Sept 7, 2023.Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Toronto\u2019s shrinking population has pushed rental vacancies higher, worsened the collapsing condo market and threatens to blow an even wider hole in the city\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also plunged Toronto to near the bottom of a ranking of the fastest-growing cities in Canada and the United States only one year after holding the top spot, according to an analysis of population data from the two countries by Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Statistics Canada reported the population of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area \u2013 which covers the City of Toronto and surrounding municipalities \u2013 shrank by roughly 1,000 people in the 12-months leading up to July 1, 2025, marking the first decline on record for the region outside of the pandemic. <\/p>\n

Toronto rental vacancy rates climb on new supply, population slowdown<\/a><\/p>\n

That was a sharp reversal from a nearly 270,000-person increase the previous year, enough to knock Toronto from first place to 412th in the TMU researchers\u2019 annual analysis<\/a> of 435 metropolitan areas in Canada and the U.S. Among Canadian cities, only Calgary and Edmonton made the top-10 list, which included slowdowns in population growth across the board compared to 2024. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While Canada\u2019s clampdown on temporary foreign workers and international students is partly behind Toronto\u2019s decline, it\u2019s far from the whole story. <\/p>\n

The researchers \u2013 Diana Petramala, a senior economist at TMU, and senior research fellow Frank Clayton \u2013 found Toronto still had one of the highest levels of net international migration among the fastest-growing cities, adding 53,000 people that way. <\/p>\n

Canada reports first annual population decline on record<\/a><\/p>\n

But that was down 84 per cent from the year before, and that immigration slowdown exposed a chronic problem Toronto has faced over the last decade: an exodus of people to other parts of Ontario and Canada, many feeling priced out by city\u2019s housing market. Toronto lost roughly 77,500 more people than it gained through domestic migration in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city\u2019s rank among other North American cities reflects sharp trends in out-migration of its existing population,\u201d the researchers wrote. \u201cIncreasingly unaffordable housing appears to be pushing many residents to other parts of Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Pedestrians cross the street in downtown Toronto on Sept 7, 2023.Fred Lum\/The Globe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,14537,3302],"class_list":["post-791426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chartoftheday","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}