ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis Metropolitan region gained 6,420 new residents from July 2023 through July 2024, the largest increase since 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, but the city itself saw a decline in population.

“The City of St. Louis is the core of the St. Louis region, and these numbers are encouraging for our metro area,” said Mayor Tishaura O. Jones in a press release. “While our city has experienced population loss for decades, these numbers show that we continue to slow that decline, with the goal of reversing it. My administration will continue to do the work of making St. Louis an appealing place to live. Despite what is happening under the Trump administration, St. Louis remains a welcoming city for our immigrant neighbors, who are crucial to the formula for reversing negative population trends.”

The St. Louis region ranked 15th out of the nation’s top 30 metro areas for GDP growth in 2023, outperforming peer metro areas including Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, and others, according to a press release from Greater St. Louis, Inc. However, the city itself saw a decline in population of a little over 3,000.

“While the overall numbers are positive, the data also show that we have much more work to do to get the region on a trajectory for sustained, long-term growth. For example, much of the growth we see in this data results from international migration to the region," Dustin Allen, the CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., said in a statement. "We need to continue our successful efforts to grow our international population, but if we are going to achieve the type of long-term growth our region needs, we must also continue to focus on advancing policies, increasing economic investment, and growing the number of high-quality jobs necessary to attract people from other areas of the country.

The St. Louis region, which became a haven for immigrants fleeing from Bosnia in the 1990s to the point that it now boasts the largest Bosnian population in the U.S., has aggressively cast itself as a potential home for immigrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, African nations, and elsewhere in an attempt to counter population losses.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the St. Louis metropolitan region saw its foreign-born population grow by 23.2% between 2022 and 2023, translating into nearly 160,000 people. That metric, which includes refugees and other immigration statuses, puts St. Louis atop the country’s 30 largest metro populations.

One of President Donald Trump's executive orders suspending refugee resettleent and international asylum “are dual blows to legal immigration in the U.S.", according to the interim CEO of the International Institute in St. Louis.

Trump's order said the refugee program would be suspended because cities and communities had been taxed by “record levels of migration” and didn't have the ability to “absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees."

In projections done prior to the presidential election, the agency said it expected to welcome more than 1,900 during the federal fiscal 2025 year that runs from October 2024-September 2025. The agency now expects that number to be drastically reduced. The International Institute said flights that were supposed to bring refugees here in February and March were canceled.

Here are a few facts from Greater St. Louis Inc. on the growth of the metropolitan area:

  • The St. Louis region had the nation’s highest rate of per capita personal income growth over the past five years
  • St. Louis ranked as one of the top five U.S. markets for job growth for the first time since 1990
  • The St. Louis region ranked 15th out of the nation’s top 30 metro areas for GDP growth in 2023, outperforming peer metro areas including Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, and others

For a more detailed look at the growth and decline of metropolitan areas around the nation, including St. Louis, click here.