Austin’s growth is slowing, increasingly driven by international migration, as Hispanic and Black residents leave

In 2022, Austin had just broken into the top 10 largest cities in America. It was the fastest-growing large metro area in the country, and had held that title for 12 years. Now, Austin has dipped to the 13th largest city, and the fourth fastest-growing region in the country. What happened in the last three years that accounts for such a sudden slowdown?

Austin’s “pull factors” — the things that draw people to a city — have been changing, said City Demographer Lila Valencia in a presentation to the Airport Advisory Commission on Wednesday. “Those historically have been things like our highly-educated workforce, our beautiful green spaces, our culture, our vibrant economy – but our economy of late is a little bit slower in terms of job growth.”

Austin’s unemployment rate is still relatively low  (3.3 percent in May as opposed to the US rate of 4.1 percent) but job growth has stalled. Specifically, what was previously the fastest growing sector in Austin, the information sector, has declined for the last few years, leading to a dip in domestic migration (from other parts of the country). Domestic migrants now consist mostly of college-age young people coming to UT Austin from other parts of Texas. Another historical pull factor for Austin has now become a push, Valencia explained: “Right now, our affordability is not what it has been in the past… (It) is causing a pressure outward.”

Austin’s high cost of living is also changing who is able to move here. “Between 2010 and 2020, the white population is what drove growth,” said Valencia. Austin is one of only seven cities in the country where that happened. And it seems we’re getting a little less young and a little less weird: Valencia explained that people moving here from other parts of the country are older, mostly over 30, have a higher household income than the median Austinite, and tend to be white males — Austin is 47 percent white. The second-largest group, Hispanic people, make up 32.5 percent, while Asian people follow up at 9 percent, Black people are at just under 7 percent, and multiracial people are at around 4 of the population.

Rising costs are driving communities of color to surrounding suburban counties.

“We saw incredible growth in the Black population in other parts of Travis County, in Williamson County and Hays County,” said Valencia.

As part of the New Great Migration of Black people from other parts of the country to the South since the 1990s, Texas gained about a million migrants between 2010 and 2020. And, “although region-wide, Black migration to the South declined during the 2015-2020 period, the major southern magnet states of Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina still led all other states in Black in-migration,” noted a Brookings Institute study from 2022. Austin itself received less than 1 percent of that growth, said Valencia. 

“It’s important to note that even though our city is increasingly more diverse, it can oftentimes obscure some of these shrinking shares of Hispanic and Black population, especially when we look at the child population that actually experienced declines,” said Valencia.

In 2023, Travis County experienced more people moving out of the county than in.

“Were it not for international migration, we could have experienced overall population decline,” said Valencia. “Historically, Austin hasn’t been an international immigrant enclave. That has always gone to places like Dallas and Houston.” In 2024, that trend reversed, mostly driven by immigrants whose country of origin is Mexico, India, Honduras, and China. Some smaller shares of the immigrant population are growing rapidly, such as the Taiwanese, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Colombian populations. 

Austin data doesn’t show whether these migrants are moving directly from those countries, or as domestic migrants from other states. However, Valencia warned that the Trump administration’s hardline stance on immigration could affect Austin’s growth.

“If we’re not seeing much change in our job growth, we may continue to see lower levels of domestic migration. If (we) are now facing additional countries on travel bans, more restrictive immigration policies that really curb humanitarian and undocumented migration…. it could mean population decline, which is something that we have not experienced in our area’s history,” she said.

Austin’s growth rate as a whole has also slowed. In the past, every year growth would increase by 2-3 percent. Since 2020, growth has been steady at 2 percent per year, and Dallas and Houston are growing more rapidly than Austin. (Indeed, the fastest-growing city in the country last year was Princeton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, which almost tripled its population in a year.) Other cities like Georgetown, Leander and Kyle have also been slowing, but Austin and Travis County have been “really draining from the growth in the metro area.” 

Still, the Austin metro area is projected to more than double in size by 2060 to 5.2 million people, adding 1.3 million at the current growth rate and up to 1.7 million should we return to our previous growth rate. Either way, Austin will surpass San Antonio to become the third largest metro in Texas. During that time, Valencia is projecting higher increases in Williamson and Hays County than Travis County. And Austin is still not prepared to handle that growth, facing serious housing and transportation crises.

“Future growth for Austin, it is very clear, is closely linked to being able to draw workers from other parts of the country and other parts of the state, but also maintaining those increasing shares of international migrants that we’ve been seeing in the last few years, and successfully retaining Austinites that are already here,” said Valencia. “That is how we will get closer and closer to that 1.7 million.”

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