What was Austin’s fastest-growing decade?

Austin may be the fastest-growing metro areas in the US, but it turns out the 2020s have nothing on the Capital City of the 1990s.

Last year, the Austin metro area had a population growth rate of 2.79%. That number represents ~50,000 new residents, but it’s a solid two percentage points lower than the city’s record.

Since 1950, ATX’s biggest annual population boom actually happened in 1997, when the number of residents increased by 4.9% in a single year.

In fact, the duration of the ‘90s marked substantial growth in our state capital, with annual rates staying above 4.2% for the entire decade.

In comparison, rates fell to 3.6% in 2019, and have been dropping ever since. United Nations projections predict that number will fall below 1% by 2030, at which time the metro area’s population will be ~2.45 million.

Graphic by ATXtoday, data sourced from macrotrends.net