Number of People Moving to Wisconsin hit 20-Year High Last Year

Wednesday, March 19th, 2025 -- 1:00 PM

(Nick Rommel, Wisconsin Public Radio) The number of people moving to Wisconsin hit at least a 20-year high last year.

And, according to Nick Rommel with the Wisconsin Public Radio, the state’s biggest counties are growing, including Milwaukee County, which grew for the first time since 2014. That’s according to population estimates released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In total, the bureau estimates Wisconsin grew by 30,000 people in 2024. Around 28,000 of those people moved to Wisconsin, 6,000 from other states, and 22,000 from abroad.

“The national increase in immigration has definitely had an impact on our population here in Wisconsin,” said Mark Sommerhauser, communications director at Wisconsin Policy Forum.

The nonpartisan policy research outfit published a report last week summing up the state’s migration trends. According to the Census Bureau, 2.8 million people migrated to the United States in 2024.

The bureau issues annual demographic estimates for 12-month periods ending every July. Newly-released 2024 numbers refer to the period between July 2023 and July 2024.

It broke down its latest data by county. The census divides population growth into migration and natural change, which is calculated by subtracting annual deaths from births.

Natural change used to be the “engine” of Wisconsin’s population growth, Sommerhauser said. It was responsible for more than 20,000 new Wisconsinites a year between 2004 and 2010, according to the Policy Forum report.

Then, natural change started to ebb. “That, within the last few years, has completely flipped,” Sommerhauser said. Natural change fell to about 10,000 by 2019. In 2024, it added only about 2,000 people to Wisconsin’s population, while migration has soared.

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