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[Statehouse News Bureau]

New census numbers show Ohio’s population isn’t declining after all but going up

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — A report last year showing Ohio’s population was projected to decline 5.7% while the US population would go up by 17.3% in the next 25 years got attention. But the state agency that put out that report said it has new numbers that indicate those forecasts may have been off.

“Those population projections are really based upon historic trends, and certainly not what we want to see happen and not necessarily a prediction of what will actually happen in the future,” said Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik. “Historically, we’ve had a decline in population since about 2001.”

But the Department of Development said new census numbers for the first part of 2025 show the highest number of people moving to Ohio in 25 years. And they indicate Ohio had the tenth highest migration rate in the country.

“We had great updates from 2024 to 2025,” said Mihalik. “We had more births than what we had projected, which is great news. And we actually had fewer deaths from 2024 to 2025. And we had more people moving in to the state of Ohio.”

A chart showing Ohio's population movement from 2001 till the first half of 2025.
A chart showing Ohio’s population movement from 2001 till the first half of 2025. [Ohio Department of Development]
The influx of 11,926 people to Ohio is a dramatic turnaround from a loss of more than 32,000 in 2021. The state’s population grew 0.3% from 2024 to last year, and nearly a full point since the 2020 census.

Ohio is one of 4 states in the U.S. which reported more births, fewer deaths, and improved domestic migration from 2024 to 2025. The others are Kentucky, Montana and New Hampshire.