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Three Idaho cities are among the 15 fastest-growing in the country, Census Bureau says

Three Idaho cities are among the 15 fastest-growing cities in the U.S., according to newly released data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The cities of Meridian, Caldwell and Nampa all grew between July 2020 and July 2021, joining cities in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Tennessee as ones that experienced the most population growth over the year.

The Census Bureau said that:

  • Meridian grew by 5.2% and has a population of 125.963

  • Caldwell grew by 5.2% and has a population of 63,629

  • Nampa grew by 5% and has a population of 106,186.

Boise is still the state’s largest city but experienced far less growth, growing by less than 1%, according to KTVB. Idaho’s total population grew from 1,847,772 to 1,900,923 between July 2020 and July 2021, according to Census Bureau data.

The city with the largest population growth was Georgetown, Texas, which grew 10.5%, the Census Bureau said.

Meridian and Nampa were also among the country’s largest-growing cities in 2020, according to the Idaho Statesman. The state as a whole was the second largest-growing one between 2010 and 2020, experiencing a population increase of 17.3%, according to the Statesman.

As cities in Idaho and other states in the South and West grew, large cities elsewhere in the country shrank. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston were among cities that experienced a decline in growth between 2020 and 2021, the Census Bureau said.

The changes in states’ and cities’ populations were influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, which caused “a historically large number of states to lose population in (a) year” and drew people around the country away from densely populated urban areas, the Statesman reported in 2021.

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