The downtown Houston skyline is visible looking north from Interstate 45 Gulf Freeway, the highway that replaced the Galveston-Houston railway
Kirk Sides/Staff photographer
Houston’s population barely inched upward in 2025 as migration trends converged to stall growth in most large American cities, according to new population estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, combined with fewer people moving domestically within the country, contributed to the lowest level of growth that Houston has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The nation’s suburbs and mid-sized cities, meanwhile, grew at a healthier clip — especially in Texas, which accounted for the five fastest-growing cities in America, including Fulshear.
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READ MORE: Will Houston’s population growth stall amid Trump’s immigration crackdown? It’s likely, experts say
The latest data shows that Houston’s booming suburbs will likely continue to bear the brunt of the region’s growth while the city itself starts to level off, especially while Trump limits the levels of immigration into the country.
“The biggest factor is the slowdown in international migration,” said Texas Demographer Lloyd Potter.
‘Sluggish growth’
Houston grew by less than half a percent between 2024 and 2025, adding roughly 11,500 people. Houston previously added over 43,000 residents in 2024 — the most of any city in the country besides New York.
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Fort Worth, San Antonio and Celina, a Dallas suburb, all added more residents last year than Houston, which ranked sixth in the nation for raw growth. New York’s population declined by over 12,000 residents last year, indicating that other big American cities were hit even harder by national trends.
“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” said Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, in a statement. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”
Houston’s future
The city-level population data released Thursday is the latest indicator that Trump’s agenda, and specifically his immigration policies, will likely stunt the growth of America’s largest cities.
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Houston, like other major urban areas, relies heavily on international migration to fuel its expansion as more and more people pack up and move to the suburbs. Trump’s near-total shutdown of the border, combined with his mass deportation efforts and anti-immigrant rhetoric, means that fewer people are moving here from around the world.
Meanwhile, county-level data released earlier this year shows that domestic migration — or the movement of people within the United States — was down across the Houston area, especially in Harris County.
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Potter said that economic uncertainty is likely keeping people from migrating to Houston from elsewhere in the country, while current residents seeking more affordable housing and better schools are increasingly choosing to move out to the suburbs.
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“There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s happening in the country, and when there’s uncertainty, people tend to be more conservative and risk averse,” Potter said. “So, when you don’t know what the economy is doing or what your prospects are for employment and things like that, people tend to stay put.”