Fort Worth climbs the list of most populous cities in US. When will it top 1 million?

May 16,2024

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See full Fort Worth Star-Telegram article by Jaime Moore-Carrillo here.

Cowtown is still a boom town — and it may soon rank among the country’s 10 largest cities.

Fort Worth last year became the 12th most populous city in the United States with 978,468 residents, climbing one spot in the charts, according to Census data released Thursday. It also experienced the second largest population swell in the country, absorbing 21,365 new residents (only a few hundred less than the largest grower, San Antonio).

But Fort Worth’s growth rate (2.2%) blew away state and national averages among big cities. Panther City’s population grew faster than Dallas (0.4%), Houston (0.5%), Austin (0.5%), and San Antonio (1.5%).

Fort Worth has minted an average of roughly 18,500 new residents annually since 2013. If trends hold, the city will reach the million person threshold by 2026.

The number of new Texans jumped 1.6% last year; the nation’s population, meanwhile, eked up 0.5%. Of the 15 cities that experienced the largest growth spurts, eight are in the Lone Star state, concentrated along the outskirts of its major metropolitan areas.

The state’s housing stock also mushroomed. Builders constructed just over 260,000 new dwellings across Texas last year, roughly 17% of all new residences nationwide; Harris, Travis, and Collin counties recorded three of the country’s five largest housing booms. Tarrant, adding 17,194 new homes, fell just outside the list, though its home construction rate (2.0%) was almost twice the national average.