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Wisconsin Has Regained Almost All the Population it Lost Since 2020

Thursday, April 13th, 2023 -- 11:01 AM

(Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) Wisconsin has regained almost all the population it lost since 2020, despite the fact that deaths are outnumbering births in the state.

But, according to Sarah Lehr with Wisconsin Public Radio, even as more people move to Wisconsin, the state's post-pandemic population gains have been uneven. Milwaukee County continues to shrink, while the Madison area in Dane County is surging.

And several rural counties in northern Wisconsin are seeing relatively high population growth rates, recently released estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau show. Between the official U.S. Census count on April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2021, Wisconsin lost 13,624 people, a drop of about 0.23 percent.

But, by July 1, 2022, Wisconsin had regained most of that loss, according to the updated census estimates. The state had nearly 5.9 million residents in 2022, which was only 1,186 fewer people than were tallied just after the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

New people relocating to Wisconsin, whether from overseas or from other states, accounted for much of the population rebound between 2021 and 2022, said John Johnson, a research fellow at the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education.

That's because deaths have been exceeding births in Wisconsin every year since 2020. In 2022, 63,397 Wisconsinites died, 1,758 more than were born. By comparison, more than 7,657 people moved to Wisconsin from elsewhere in the U.S., and an estimated 8,174 people immigrated to the state from other countries, according the Census Bureau totals.

The phenomenon of deaths exceeding births has been decades in the making, Johnson said. Demographers point to factors like the aging of baby boomers, as well as trends seen in other developed nations where people are more likely to give birth later and to have fewer children overall compared to previous generations.

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