San Jose is back up to 12th biggest city in the U.S., displacing Austin

San Jose once the nation s th largest city before falling to the th spot is clawing its way up the rankings of the majority populous cities in the United States The self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley now creeping back toward a million residents is officially the nation s th largest city according to new figures from the U S Census Bureau It s good to be growing again mentioned Mayor Matt Mahan when he heard the news It just feels like there is a new vigor According to the new figures as of July San Jose had an estimated residents growing by nearly residents from the year before At its peak San Jose was home to residents in In the mid s San Jose bumped Detroit from the th spot For multiple years San Jose remained the th biggest city in the country until the coronavirus struck We had particular rough years during the pandemic Mahan commented referring to and beyond when a great number of remote workers fled the city for less crowded more affordable locales Though it was the third the bulk populous city in California behind Los Angeles and San Diego San Jose started to lose residents in and by dramatic pandemic drops pushed the city to the th spot Jacksonville Florida and Austin Texas both surpassed San Jose s population that year Then content presented San Jose dropping another spot on the list with Fort Worth Texas rising a spot leaving San Jose at th Now this is the rebound Mahan commented We are in a horse race with Austin Mahan stated with a tone of satisfaction that this year s results show San Jose ahead once again Austin now sits in the th spot While the new census statistics does not include an explanation for what s behind San Jose s latest population surge experts who have analyzed evidence from previous years and other material sources point to fluctuations in international immigration as one of the driving factors behind the population decline before and during the pandemic When pandemic restrictions were lifted the return of international immigration pushed the region s population change back into the positive But the future for numerous of those immigrants in the U S is increasingly precarious with the Trump administration making promises to limit foreign arrivals in countless avenues San Jose s population first crossed over million according to census estimates in where it remained until The city s population was already dropping before the pandemic partly due to immigration restrictions during Trump s first term so the reversal is especially notable Now the city is growing again and for the second year in a row If the South Bay city s population continues to increase at the same rate it will pass a million residents for the second time by this July Seeing workers and families come back to San Jose demonstrates that our focus on the basics is working and that the Bay Area s best days are ahead Mahan explained Russell Hancock president of the local think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley credited at least a portion of that upsurge to the exploding artificial intelligence industry in the region But continued rise is especially precarious right now Hancock revealed I think we are in for three rocky years Related Articles Liam and Olivia dominate again with top baby names for a sixth year in a row Where Roman Catholics live around the world and in the Bay Area White men in the minority as U S boardrooms enter new era California population rise State just residents short of record high Charts show Bay Area Vietnamese population learning level and income Hancock sees immigration and tariffs as two issues that could impact the city s continued progress in these next years with the uncertainty dampening the region s appetite for big fateful choices he mentioned whether the tariffs are ultimately implemented or not According to the national figures Texas had four of the top five fastest-growing cities including the fastest-growing city in the country Princeton Texas which grew by in just a year All of the country s fastest growing cities have populations between and residents while the larger cities tend to have less dramatic year-to-year fluctuations A large number of population upsurge rates reversed or saw major changes between and explained Crystal Delb a statistician in the Census Bureau s Population Division In fact cities of all sizes in all regions evidenced faster increase and larger gains than in except for small cities in the South whose average population expansion rate remained the same she stated