CHARLOTTE — Charlotte added more people to its population base annually in 2025 than any other U.S. city or town, according to new Census Bureau data.
The city of Charlotte grew by 20,731 residents from July 2024 to July 2025, reaching an estimated population of 964,784. Its growth rate of 2.2% ranked at No. 208 nationally among 1,926 incorporated places with at least 20,000 people. The Census population estimates were released early on May 14.
Charlotte remains the country’s 14th-largest city, the data shows. In 2024, it had moved up from the 15th-largest city, passing Columbus, Ohio. Charlotte is about 25,000 people shy of the 13th-largest city — California’s San Jose, which has an estimated population of nearly 990,000 residents as of July 1, 2025.
Charlotte and other large U.S. cities, however, are seeing a slowdown in population growth, according to a Census Bureau report tied to the new estimates. The Queen City, for instance, gained fewer new residents than it did from 2023 to 2024, when it grew 2.8% — by an estimated 25,783 people.
Midsize towns and cities across the nation also are often growing at a faster pace than their larger counterparts.
That’s true for Charlotte, too. Six communities surrounding Charlotte with at least 20,000 people saw higher population growth on a percentage basis, led for another year by Fort Mill.
“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in the report. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”
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