US metros that grew the most since 1990
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL added +4,130,285 residents since 1990, the largest absolute metro gain in the United States.
The metropolitan ranking smooths out the noise of suburban annexation and city-vs-county definitions. Across 192 US metro areas with at least 250,000 residents today, the 25 with the biggest absolute population gains since 1990 are below.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL leads at +4,130,285 residents added. The top 10 of this list account for more than a third of all US population growth since 1990.
Key findings
- Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL leads the list at +4,130,285.
- The 25th-ranked metro on this list — Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD — shows +836,546.
- Across the full universe of 192 metro rows with both data points, the typical change was +161,774.
- The top gainers concentrate in Texas (4 of the top 25), California (4 of the top 25), Florida (3 of the top 25).
Where the pattern sits geographically
Texas (4 of the top 25), California (4 of the top 25), Florida (3 of the top 25) together account for the bulk of the top of this list. Click any metro above to open its CensusEasy page, which carries the full historical time series for every metric we publish (income, education, housing, commute, race composition, industry mix), plus its rank within its state and its national percentile on each metric.
How to read this
This ranking is sorted by absolute change, not by percentage change. Absolute change is the figure that lines up with how readers experience these numbers in everyday life ("the typical household here earns $X more than in 1990"). The percentage-change framing surfaces a different set of metro rows — usually places that started from a low base — and we publish those rankings separately on the rankings pages.
A single metric never tells the whole story. The smallest gain on this list can reflect either change in the same population staying in place, or compositional change as some residents leave and others arrive. Companion studies on poverty, education, and housing cost together describe the fuller picture.
Metro boundaries here are the current OMB CBSA delineations, applied retroactively to 1990 data, so the numbers reflect today's metro footprint at both endpoints.
Total resident population, 1990 versus the latest ACS 5-year, for every US Core-Based Statistical Area (metropolitan + micropolitan). Metro-level 1990 figures are computed by aggregating the component counties under the current OMB CBSA delineation, so the comparison is on a constant-geography basis.
Metros with at least 250,000 residents today are included. The ranking is by absolute population change.
The full underlying ranking is available as a CSV — every place with both data points, not just the top rows shown above. Columns: rank, place, state, baseline value, latest value, change, and the CensusEasy URL for each place.
↓ us-metros-that-grew-the-most-since-1990.csvYou may cite or republish these findings, and the downloadable dataset is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Reuse requires that you credit CensusEasy and link back to this page so readers can verify the underlying data.
CensusEasy Data Team (2026). "US metros that grew the most since 1990." CensusEasy. Retrieved from https://censuseasy.com/studies/us-metros-that-grew-the-most-since-1990
- 1990 Decennial Census — Summary Tape File 3A (STF3A), public-domain CD-ROM extracts. Median household income from P080, education attainment from P057, mean commute time computed from P049.
- American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates — US Census Bureau, latest published vintage, Tables B19013 (income), B15003 (education), B08303 / B08013 (commute), B25077 (home value).
- Decennial Census 2020 — for population and density baselines.
- BLS Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) — annual averages, used to convert nominal dollars to 2024 dollars. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- The full underlying tables for every place are available on each place's CensusEasy page; click any row in this study to open the place page.
CensusEasy publishes original research grounded in US Census Bureau data. Every study includes the underlying numbers, methodology, and sources so readers can verify or extend the analysis.
Data note. Figures in this report are derived from US Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, including American Community Survey estimates that carry sampling margins of error. This information is provided as is, for general informational purposes, without warranty of accuracy or completeness. CensusEasy is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US Census Bureau or any government agency. See our Terms of Use for details.