Population growth from people moving into Texas from other U.S. states has slowed to a 20-year low, according to new census estimates released last week. Still, the state ranked second in the nation for highest domestic migration in 2025, dropping out of the No. 1 spot it had held for the past two years.
Why the slowdown?
“One thing could be that people who wanted to move to Texas have already moved,” said Helen You, interim director of the Texas Demographics Center.
About 67,000 people relocated to Texas from other states in the year ending in June, census data shows. That number has fallen every year since 2022, when Texas reached a pandemic high of 219,000 new residents from within the U.S.
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Overall population growth in Texas has slowed in the last few years — dropping from over 600,000 during the 12 months ending in 2023 to less than 400,000 in June 2025. With birth and death rates relatively steady in that period, migration seems to have had the most influence on that change.
You said the 2025 shift may also be occurring in the larger context of decreasing mobility nationwide.
Brookings Institution demographer William Frey agrees, saying long-term trends including more participation by women in the workforce and greater homeownership have contributed to that trend for decades.
For Texas specifically, You said decelerating job growth may also have contributed to the 2025 decrease in domestic migration. Texas had a 0.1% increase in jobs in 2025, far below the state’s long-term average of 2%, which has helped draw people to the state, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve.
Frey and You also suggested Texas’ recent domestic migration boom may have been mainly a pandemic phenomenon.
Frey noted other destination states have experienced a drop in the number of people moving in from elsewhere in the country.
Domestic migration to Florida dropped from more than 310,000 in the 12 months before July 2022 to less than 23,000 in 2025, Frey said. The number of people moving to Arizona started falling even earlier, in 2021, census data shows.
Other factors, like changes in data collection and processing, could also affect the numbers, You added.
Across the country, international migration has slowed, dropping from about 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the past two years.
“I don’t think you should disregard the immigration from abroad because it’s a huge part of Texas’s population growth,” Frey said.
In Texas, international migration in the 12 months before June 2025 was less than 170,000 — half compared with the same time frame ending July 2024. In the years before, international migration had been swiftly increasing, jumping from about 43,000 in 2021 to more than 350,000 in 2024.
Texas ranked second in the country in 2025 for international migration.
During President Joe Biden’s administration, several refugee and parole programs, including those for Ukrainian and Venezuelan immigrants, contributed to the sharp increase in international migration, said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
At the end of Biden’s term, the government put in policies to dissuade unauthorized border crossings. The administration also urged the Mexican government to tighten its restrictions on northward migration. As a result, international migration started to decline before Biden left office, she said.
President Donald Trump has significantly increased deportation efforts and has closed numerous legal entry pathways, contributing to the slowest population growth since early in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tightening immigration policies could already be hurting Texas businesses, Gelatt said, pointing to survey data from the Dallas Federal Reserve. Thirteen percent of responding firms said it was harder to retain workers from May to July 2025; only 2% said it became easier. And a fifth of employers surveyed said the new policies would hamper their ability to retain foreign-born workers.
“Consumers might notice that,” Gelatt said. “It might be that you wait longer to have somebody come serve you at a restaurant, or you’re asked to use the self-checkout machine.”
Experts are still monitoring whether these slowdowns are outliers or representative of a longer trend, You said. Ultimately, the data indicates to public officials when and how they’ll need to change policies to handle shifting infrastructure and labor force needs.
“Texas has been growing for quite some time,” You said. “At some point, the growth will slow down, right?”