Utah’s population has officially surpassed 3.5 million, but growth in the state has slowed overall.
A new report released Wednesday from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah estimated that the state added more than 50,000 new residents from July 2023 through July 2024. And while population growth continued, it was down to .1% from 2023, from 1.6% two years ago to 1.5% last year.
Migration to the state and natural increase — the number of annual births minus annual deaths — contributed almost equally to population growth in Utah, with net migration accounting for 52% of new residents and natural increase accounting for 48%, according to the report. Utah’s net migration — which subtracts the number of people moving out of the state from those who move in — was slightly more than 26,000 in 2024, down from more than 31,000 in 2023. Representatives from the Gardner Institute told reporters Thursday that they estimated about 138 new residents are moving to Utah every day.
The rate of natural increase, meanwhile, did not change for the first time in over ten years.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Senior demographic analyst Emily Harris said Thursday the group found that the sharp increase in deaths from COVID-19 contributed to the declining natural increase rates in recent years, but those figures are starting to normalize. “That’s kind of signaling to us that we are demographically past the COVID-19 impact and starting to see a stabilization of this vital record data,” she told reporters.
Salt Lake County, however, bucked trends across the state, with 57% of its population growth driven by natural increase, a change from a 51% majority net migration increase in the county in 2023.
“Utah’s recent shift from natural increase to net migration as the primary source of growth represents a continuation of COVID-19 trends, though this year’s data shows a slowing of that initial post-pandemic pattern,” the report read. “These estimates reflect a continuation of slowing after the fast growth exhibited earlier in the decade.”
In the mid-2010s, Utah’s population grew significantly and was up more than 2% a year for several years in a row. That increase slowed from 2018 through 2020, but increased again in 2021. It has fallen in the years since.
Piute County, which has an estimated 1,649 residents, saw the highest amount of change in the state, with a 5.3% population increase. Next, with a 3.1% population increase, Tooele County added 5,000 new residents, up from a 2.2% increase in the country in 2023. Utah and Washington counties both saw 3.0% increases, while several others grew by more than 2.0%, including Rich (2.9%), Iron (2.8%), Juab (2.7%), and Wasatch (2.3%).
“Utah County has been the largest driver of statewide growth for the last five years and accounts for 43% of the population increase in 2024,” the Gardner report read. “Salt Lake (24%), Washington (12%), and Tooele (5%) counties also contributed large shares of state growth in 2024.”
Eight counties, meanwhile, lost population — including Daggett, Emery, Carbon, Sevier, Uintah, Garfield, Summit, and Kane. Six counties — Carbon, Garfield, Daggett, Wayne, Piute, and Rich — had more deaths than births from 2023 to 2024.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
“Typically, slower-growing counties are fueled by natural increase, with less or negative net migration, and faster-growing counties are fueled more by net migration,” the report read. “In 2024, net migration drove growth in 11 counties, a drop from last year when 17 counties’ growth were fueled by net migration. Of the 11 counties with large shares of net migration, 8 of them had growth rates higher than the state.”
Once the state with the highest birth rate in the United States, a 2022 Gardner report found Utah fourth in fertility rates across the country, and Republican Gov. Spencer Cox has repeatedly raised concerns about the state’s declining birth rate. “It’s not our thing anymore,” he said at the Utah Valley Growth and Prosperity Summit last November. “No one has figured out why the world has stopped having babies yet, but we are trending off a demographic cliff.”
Natalie Gochnour, the director of the Gardner Institute, said during Thursday’s meeting with reporters that economic concerns are a major driver in the slowdown. “We absolutely believe housing affordability is moderating our growth,” she said. “That’s a factor in both people moving here and people staying here when they have alternatives.”
Harris also said that the group is finding that people are tending to have kids later, meaning Utah could see a backlog of births in the coming years.
“There are a lot of millennials that are kind of in their early and mid-30s, and that could potentially keep the fertility rate from declining more,” she said. “We just don’t necessarily know that yet. That’s something we keep our eye on every year.”
Still, a Gardner report from last fall estimated that Utah’s population will grow by an additional 500,000 people from 2024 through 2033, with an average annual growth rate of 1.5%. “The short-term projections indicate continued statewide population growth driven by a nearly 50/50 split between natural increase and net migration out to 2033,” Gardner’s director of demographic research Mallory Bateman said in a statement at the time. “Continued economic growth largely drives this migration of new residents to Utah.”
This population growth may also mean that Utah could earn a fifth Congressional seat in the 2030 redistricting, several groups that follow reapportionment told The Salt Lake Tribune in November. The Gardner Institute has said they expect much of that growth to be concentrated in the Wasatch Front.
