Los Angeles has spent four straight years watching more residents leave than arrive, a rare losing streak for a city that once symbolized endless growth. Yet the latest federal estimates suggest that exodus is finally slowing, even as the nation’s second-largest city struggles to convert stabilization into real momentum.
The story of Los Angeles now sits at the intersection of two powerful trends: a state that is quietly adding people again and a metropolis that remains a net loser in the population race. I see a city trying to pivot from crisis management to long-term repair, while the numbers still remind leaders how fragile that recovery is.
Los Angeles is still huge, but its growth engine has stalled
Even after years of losses, Los Angeles remains one of the country’s dominant urban centers, both in size and cultural reach. It is still ranked just behind New York in the hierarchy of major American cities, with Los Angeles holding the second spot ahead of Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Philadelphia, a reminder that the city’s scale gives it economic and political weight that smaller metros cannot match. That stature is visible in everything from global entertainment to the sheer volume of people who search for information about Los Angeles every day, reinforcing its role as a national reference point even as its population plateaus.
What has changed is the direction of the trend line. According to federal Population Change estimates, the country’s fastest growth is now happening in smaller and mid-sized places, including Princeton city in Texas, a suburb of Dallas that has emerged as a standout gainer. While those communities add residents, Los Angeles is working simply to stop the bleeding, a dramatic shift from the era when big coastal cities reliably absorbed new arrivals. The city’s challenge is no longer about attracting attention, it is about persuading people to stay.
Four years of losses, then a fragile return to the plus column
The headline figure that Los Angeles has shed more residents than any other U.S. city for four consecutive years reflects a period when large urban cores were hit hardest by pandemic disruption, remote work and high housing costs. County-level data showed that some of the nation’s biggest jurisdictions experienced steep net domestic outflows, with one earlier analysis noting that in several states, including Illinois, as many as 75% of counties saw negative net domestic migration. Los Angeles County fit that pattern, and the city at its core became a symbol of residents trading dense, expensive neighborhoods for cheaper metros in the interior West and South…