Colorado is: full

Standing room only

How ‘bout, More crowded than it was but less crowded than we thought?

Local takeaways from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent data drop are too complex for bumper sticker treatment, but here’s the banner in a nutshell:

During a year in which the U.S. population growth rate slowed significantly, Colorado finally crested the 6 million mark on the eve of its sesquicentennial anniversary, news that Gov. Jared Polis said Wednesday serves to reconfirm the state’s reputation as a prime (though arguably never on the down-low) destination.

“The secret is out, Colorado is the best place to live, work, play, start a family, and grow a business,” said Polis in the celebratory press release. While he acknowledged a denser population can bring challenges such as higher housing prices and congestion, “(m)ore Coloradans helps bolster our economy, expand business ventures, and bring fresh ideas to our great state. … The numbers don’t lie, and I am excited to see Colorado’s population grow despite trends across the nation.”

The numbers may not lie, but they can tell a different story in the company of other numbers, and history.

A decade ago, Colorado was in the throes of its biggest modern population boom, with in-migration peaking in the mid-2010s in a 12-month period that reportedly saw more than 100,000 people relocate here – more than double the average influx for other states at the time.

While still representing a 0.4% increase over the previous year, net in-migration to Colorado in 2025 was a hair below the national average, with the state gaining slightly more than 24,000 people, its lowest number in more than a generation.

The Census Bureau’s most recent report shows similar trends across the board, with every state except Montana and West Virginia reporting downturns and the nation, overall, experiencing its “slowest population growth since the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The U.S. grew by 1.8 million people, or 0.5%, between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, representing a drop of almost 50% from the previous 12-month cycle, according to the bureau, which pointed to recent policy sea changes in a statement accompanying the Tuesday data release.

“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the Census Bureau. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today.”

The data in Colorado appears to defy at least one part of such trends.  According to the state demography office, the number of births in Colorado between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, was 65,380, a 4.6% increase over the 2023-2024 period and the most since 2017. 

Tax revenue is an outcome of population, hard and soft data, estimations and projections that underpin more decisions and realities than you can imagine, said Monument-based economist Tatiana Bailey.

In her purview as founder and executive director of Data Driven Economic Strategies, she’s seen the ebbs and flows and has come to understand the critical connections at play. When numbers shift, even by small degrees, the outcomes can be difficult to predict.

“How many people are here, how many people are moving in, how many people are moving out … of course, that matters tremendously,” said Bailey. ”If lots of people are moving here, you get lots of new tax revenue, right? And then builders are happy because they’re building more homes, and the businesses are happy because you have more consumers ….

“Demographics,” she said, “affect everything.”

For what it’s worth, the “U-Haul Growth Index: Where People Moved in 2025” survey had more solidly rosy news about population ebbs and flows in the Centennial State. 

Results of that survey sent Colorado leap-frogging from 2024’s 40th-most popular destination state to No. 23, back into the realm of “net-gain states” with more U-Haulers moving in than out.