Census shows US population growth rate has slowed

Newly released US Census data indicate that Texas will gain two seats in the US House of Representatives while New York and California each will lose one.

Starting in 2023 — after the 2022 congressional elections — seven states will have fewer seats in Congress than they currently do, while six will have more. 

States also losing one House seat are Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, mostly blue, or Democratic-leaning states.

Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will gain one seat each, according to the results of the decennial census released Monday.

The number of House seats a state has also determines its votes in the Electoral College, increasing or decreasing state residents' power to pick the president.

The 2020 census showed that the US population as of April 1, 2020, was 331,449,281, a 7.4 percent increase over the last decade. That marked the second-lowest growth rate, ahead of the 7.3 percent rate of the 1930s, since the census started in 1790.

Utah, with a population growth rate of 18.4 percent, was the fastest-growing state since the 2010 census, but it wasn't enough to get the state another House seat.

For California, it's the first time that the state will lose a congressional seat while remaining the most populous state. It's not that the state population dropped, but rather that its growth rate fell behind other states.

People have been leaving California for states such as Texas and Nevada for the past 30 years. In addition, the state's birth rate and immigration numbers also dropped. According to estimates released in 2020, California had 10 percent fewer births in the second decade than in the first decade of this century and had 44 percent fewer immigrants.

Some states, like New York, or interest groups might challenge the count in court because the census was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid President Donald Trump's failed attempt to change census practices by excluding undocumented immigrants and adding a citizenship question.

New York lost its seat by only 89 people to Minnesota.

But a challenge to the numbers used would be "extremely uphill and difficult", Jeffrey Wice, an expert on redistricting, voting rights and census law, told Bloomberg. 

States, cities and civil rights groups have filed court challenges to reapportionment in the past but have not been successful. "It's very hard to challenge the Census Bureau over congressional reapportionment," Wice said. 

The data also showed that overall immigration numbers have dropped in the last decade. The rate of new immigrants had been rising since the 1970s but leveled off after the 2008 recession and declined during the coronavirus pandemic. It was also partially due to tougher immigration enforcement on the border with Mexico since 2010. 

Another factor for the lower growth rate is the country's persistent decline in the birth rate. American women are delaying childbearing, a trend that has existed for some years. 

The data showed that the South and the West are drawing people, while the Northeast and Midwest population numbers have been stagnating in recent decades. Booming economies in Texas, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina have drawn people away from high-cost, cold-weather states. 

In New York, 48 of 62 counties are estimated to be losing population. In Illinois, 93 of 102 counties are believed to be shrinking. 

Idaho's population growth was primarily gained from Californians moving there. In 1970, the West and the South combined for only close to half the US population. Now they make up 62 percent of total population.