The 12 States That Would Shrink Without International Migration

It is a fairly well-known fact that several U.S. states - among them prominent coastal ones - are losing population. One major factor in this development that started some years ago (even before the pandemic) has been domestic outmigration which is sometimes tied to high cost of living. At the same time, international immigration diversified in the United States location-wise, eventually tipping the scales for these states despite many still registering more births than deaths, including California, New York, Hawaii and Illinois.

Less well known is which states depend on migration - mostly the international type - to continue to grow. These places are a more diverse bunch and include both places that need to compensate for falling birth rates and places that are struggling with people moving to other parts of the country (or both). This is especially interesting among the renewed discussion about U.S. immigration in the election year 2024. While the most contentious debate has been about illegal entrants, third-time candidate Donald Trump has also gone after legal migration during his term in office between 2017 and 2021.

Among the states that would have lost population in 2023 without legal international migration is this year's battleground state Michigan as well as Ohio, which is expected to vote for Trump for a third time despite having picked Democrat Barack Obama for president in 2008 and 2012. Both states have negative net births, meaning more people die each year than are born, and negative or very low domestic net immigration. However, tens of thousands of people move to both states each year from abroad (even after subtracting those who leave for a different country), compensating for the above losses. The situation is similar in Mississippi and New Mexico.

Also shrinking without international immigration would be Alaska, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washinton and New Jersey, among others. In their cases, it is massive domestic outmigration that has to be counterbalanced as net births have stayed positive in all five states. The most drastic example is Massachusetts, which grew by around 7,000 people last year after accounting only for births and deaths, but at the same time lost almost 40,000 people to net domestic outmigration. The arrival of more than 50,000 legal international immigrants made up for it, though.

U.S. states that do not receive a large number of international migrants but depend on domestic immigration for population growth are New Hampshire and Maine, as they are seen as cheaper, more scenic and still close to East Coast population centers. Several more states in the U.S. registered negative net births but were able to grow due to migration in general, with Vermont being the only which could not have done without neither its domestic nor its international arrivals in order to increase population.