NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: June 1, 2022
Media Contact: Jan.Roeser@labor.idaho.gov or Sam.Wolkenhauer@labor.idaho.gov

Four southwestern Idaho cities ranked in the top five slots for population growth in the state from 2020 to 2021 according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 Vintage Population Estimates.* Idaho Falls, ranked fourth and was the lone city outside of southwestern Idaho to rank in the top five.

Boise remained Idaho’s largest city, followed by Meridian, Nampa, Idaho Falls and Caldwell. Meridian edged out Nampa as Idaho’s second largest city in 2014 with the population difference increasing each year. Rankings for the top 15 Idaho cities by population size are shown in Table 1, with one change from 2020 — Kuna displaced Moscow for the No.13 spot.

Nationally, Meridian, Caldwell and Nampa ranked 13, 14 and 15 of the fastest-growing cities of 50,000 residents or more across the U.S., each at or above 5% growth rate.

Growth rates for Idaho’s top 15 fastest-growing cities ranged between 20.3% to 5.7%. The larger cities experiencing high growth were Post Falls and Kuna at 8.7% and 8.6%, respectively. Star, Rathdrum and Middleton were mid-sized towns with high growth rates of 10%, 8.6% and 6.6%, respectively. Eight of Idaho’s cities lost population, the largest of those was Garden City. Nine smaller population towns experienced flat or zero growth.

Table 2

The 15 cities with the greatest numeric population increases totaled 31,265 or 59% of the statewide growth estimated at 53,151 for 2021 – a 2.9% increase from 2020. All but two of the cities ranked in the top 15 for most populous — Star and Middleton.

Complete data is available at data.census.gov.

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*Each new series of data (called vintages) incorporate the latest administrative record data, geographic boundaries and methodology. When multiple vintages of data are available, the most recent vintage is the preferred. The vintage year (for example, V2021) refers to the final year of the time series.