Twin Cities population growth is slowing, Met Council report finds
MINNEAPOLIS — A new report from the Metropolitan Council shows that population growth in the Twin Cities is slowing down in the 2020s compared to the previous decade.
Between 2020 and 2023, the metro region's population grew by 1.9% by adding more than 59,000 people for a total of more than 3.2 million people in the Twin Cities metro.
In the 2010s, the average annual population growth was more than 30,000, the Met Council says. So far, the region has added an estimated average of less than 20,000 people per year.
Meanwhile, construction is still booming in the area. Between 2020 and 2023, 62,500 housing units were added. However, only 48,500 new households were formed, causing occupancy rates to fall slightly from 95.7% in 2020 to 94.9% in 2023.
The Met Council attributed lower birth rates and higher death rates to the change in population growth for the Twin Cities. Additionally, adult children and others are leaving where they have been living to form their own households, Met Council researcher Matt Schroeder says.
The cities seeing the highest growth rates are in places the Met Council calls "suburban edge and emerging suburban edge communities." These include places like Dayton, Victoria and Lake Elmo.
Minneapolis and St. Paul gained more households than any other city, but the Met Council says cities like Richfield and Bloomington are still gaining high numbers of households.