SEATTLE — Seattle, the fastest-growing big city of the last decade, is now losing population.
The Census Bureau released population data Thursday for all U.S. cities, towns and places. It shows that from July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, at the peak of the pandemic, Seattle had a net loss of nearly 4,300 people, which represents a decline of 0.6%.
The city’s population now stands just shy of 734,000, and Seattle remains the 18th most-populous city in the nation. The last time Seattle’s population declined was between 2002 and 2003, when the city lost a modest 200 people.
It’s strange feeling for me to write about Seattle losing population. I’ve covered these Census Bureau releases in my column since 2013, when Seattle suddenly became the fastest-growing big city in the nation. For six consecutive years, Seattle ranked in the top 2 for the rate of growth. And in the 2019 to 2020 period, before the effects of the pandemic were captured in the data, Seattle was No. 1 again.
Even so, I was sure this news was coming. In March, the Census Bureau released population figures for U.S. counties, and it showed that King County had its first population decline in nearly 50 years. The county lost around 20,000 people from July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021, but the data didn’t tell us how much of the loss came from Seattle. Now, with this new data release, we know it was about 4,300.