Los Angeles County had the largest population loss from national migration in the United States between 2020 and 2021, according to Census Bureau population estimates released Thursday.
The county lost 179,757 residents to another part of the country between 2020 and 2021, followed by New York County, in the state of the same name, which saw 113,642 of its residents move to other states.
The pandemic intensified population migration trends to the south and west of the country, as well as a slowdown in growth in the largest US cities.
Los Angeles’ loss contrasts with the majority of counties in the country, 2,063 or 65.6% of the total, which had overall positive national migration from 2020 to 2021.
Maricopa County in Arizona gained the most residents due to national migration (46,866), followed by Riverside County, California (31,251), an area neighboring Los Angeles.
Christine Hartley, deputy chief of the Census Bureau’s Estimates and Projections Division, explained in a statement that national migration patterns last year contributed to more counties gaining rather than losing population.
He added that in many cases people traded larger, more populous counties for smaller, medium-sized counties.
Despite the loss, Los Angeles is the largest county in the United States, with a population of more than 9,829,544.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area, which includes other areas surrounding the county, also saw a decrease between July 2020 and July 2021. In that period, the area went from 13,173,266 to 12,997,353, a reduction of 175,913 inhabitants.
This is the second largest drop among US metropolitan areas, trailing only the New York area, which comprises parts of New Jersey, which lost nearly 328,000 residents in total.
In California, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metropolitan area saw its population drop by 116,385.