The Population of Texas Hit a Whopping 28.3 Million This Year

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and that includes population growth! According to the Texas Tribune, the Lone Star State is now home to 28.3 million residents, 400,000 of which joined the state this year. The rate of Texas’ population growth is actually the seventh-highest in America at a 1.4 percent growth rate.

So where do we see the biggest rate of growth? The Texas Tribune explains that “natural increase” is to thank for bringing more Texans to the world, meaning Texans had 209,690 babies this year. Also, “…the state added another 189,580 residents as a result of net migration — the difference between the number of people leaving Texas for other places and the number of people coming to Texas,” they write. Interestingly, the numbers of natural increase versus net migration last year were closer in number, and net migration even outpaced natural increase at that time.

As Austin Business Journal points out, this population data comes from July 1, 2016, and July 1, 2017, but the U.S. Census Bureau didn’t publicly release the information until last week. This means that any sort of population flux from Hurricane Harvey will not be noted.

Read more about the statistics from the Census Bureau here.