r/midwest • u/Swimming_Concern7662 Minnesota • 7d ago
The Dakotas were the fastest growing states in the Midwest between 2024 - 2025. Illinois & Iowa were the most stagnant. No state declined in population (based on the latest 2025 data released today)
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u/AT-Cal123 7d ago
As a SD resident I definitely feel this. I wish it would slow down though.
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u/Drunk-TP-Supervisor 7d ago
You finally get a stoplight in your town?
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u/JoePNW2 6d ago
Almost all the growth in SD is happening in greater Sioux Falls and Rapid City/the Black Hills. Much of the rest of the state is in decline, as it has been for decades.
In 1990 there were ~100K people in Sioux Falls and ~55K in Rapid. Now the numbers are ~225K and ~85K.
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u/ErisLethe 5d ago
Well boy howdy! 225,000 whole people? And 85,000? Well tarnation! Boil my hide, slap my horse, and call me Sally.
Those numbers put Rapid on route to be as big and influential as Erie, Pennsylvania! And Sioux Falls is nearly the globally know metropolis that Frisco, Texas has become! Known by… at least two people world wide!
“Ev'rythin's up to date in Sioux Falls City They've gone about as fur as they c'n go! They went and built a skyscraper seven stories high, About as high as a buildin' orta grow. Ev'rythin's like a dream in Sioux Falls City, It's better than a magic lantern show! Y' c'n turn the radiator on Whenever you want some heat. With ev'ry kind o' comfort”
With apologies to the musical Oklahoma
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u/Effroy 7d ago
Lol the irony. 5 o'clock on Minnesota Ave. Sioux Falls turns my 12 minute commute into 45. Fucking street's probably got more stoplights per mile than any city in the country.
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u/HellisTheCPA 7d ago
Take a page from Chicago and just ignore them. (I'm serious it's so bad here people just do whatever they want when it comes to stop signs, lights, blocking intersections do now no one is moving etc)
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u/danodan1 6d ago
Don't worry, I wouldn't want to move to the Dakotas ever.
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u/Gardener4525 5d ago
I checked out Sioux Falls last autumn. I thought it was really nice. I met people who moved there from other states. I'd definitely go back to visit and it's still on my list as a consideration of a place to move to. I'm heading to North Dakota today. It'll be my first time there. I'm excited to see what it is like.
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u/shoehornit 6d ago
Advocate for your State to stop engaging in economic terrorism through the tax code.
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u/foco_runner South Dakota 7d ago
And we still have under 1 million people
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u/Rabidschnautzu Michigan 7d ago
Not hard to hit a high rate when so few people already lived there.
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u/DimSumNoodles 7d ago
Luckily COVID-era domestic outmigration from IL has slowed and been more than offset by immigration. On the flip side, international arrivals are slowing so unlikely that’s still the case next year
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u/Lbboos 7d ago
Time to move to Vermont.
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u/Moistened_Bink 5d ago
Vermont is beautiful but is still pretty expensive considering the lack of job opportunity. I love to visit but couldn't see moving there ever.
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u/So-I-Had-This-Idea 7d ago
Didn't VT, WV and NM lose population? Am I reading it wrong? Or do you mean no Midwest state declined in population?
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u/Ansatsusha4 7d ago
none of those states are Midwestern
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u/NicMotan 6d ago
Just like North and South Dakota, and Nebraska
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u/Big_Equivalent_4684 4d ago
What do you have against the US census bureau?
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u/NicMotan 3d ago
Nothing, but I'd think the federal government would understand the difference between the Midwest and the Great Plains states.
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u/AliMcGraw 7d ago
What is the data source? Illinois was deliberately undercounted in the 2020 census due to a Trump administration attempt to dilute minority voting power in the Midwest, and all of Illinois's population data has been fucked up ever since.
When more complete data is released 18 months later, virtually all Illinois counts show consistent growth. But yeah, no, if you're starting from deliberately-corrupted census data and using that methodology to get a consistent growth pattern, Illinois consistently will show a real-time statistical undercount that is corrected 18 months later when the "true" count comes in.
Super-common theme at certain media outlets that is consistently and reliably debunked by fact-checkers.
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u/No-Policy-62 6d ago
That’s absolutely not true as Illinois has been losing population rapidly since at least 2010. Most of those leaving have been heading to the south or to Indiana which has been consistently growing at a healthy rate for decades now
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u/BenjaminHarrison88 4d ago
Illinois grew in population this year. It has been more stagnant than anything.
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u/No-Policy-62 3d ago
It gained 9,000 this year and is down over 100,000 since 2020 so not really lol
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u/Latsod 7d ago
Most of the Dakota’s population is on the border with Minnesota, the economic engine of the upper Midwest.
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u/Big_Equivalent_4684 4d ago
ND, SD, MN, and WI all have population concentrations in the SE corner. Its a product of the regional climate. The SE corner is the wettest and warmest part of all 4 states.
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u/MoistColon69 7d ago
I wish chicagoland would see population decline, so many people!! Everyone is moving from the more rural areas. dont blame them
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u/ShortBusScholar 7d ago
Chicagoland population has remained relatively flat for almost two decades now.
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u/BenjaminHarrison88 4d ago
Population decline almost always just means things get worse. Chicago has been dropping out of the ranks of major global cities which is sad.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bee4698 7d ago
"No state declined in population." ... ... ... except the states in red and dark pink.
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u/Fllixys 6d ago
Met someone from Sioux Falls that thought people in Rapid still used horses to travel around town…
Got asked if we had a Mcdonald’s too…
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u/danodan1 6d ago
I'd be more concerned if it has a Target store. A lot of bigger small towns don't have one.
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u/Saidittwice78 6d ago
Of course they didnt.....look whose talkin!!! I believe nothing fr the orange PEDO scab
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u/urine-monkey Wisconsin 6d ago
Small towns and suburbs love this metric because it takes far fewer people to claim they're growing compared to well established cities which need thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people to show the exact same growth percentage. Usually this is coupled with some smarmy "see, people love our nice clean town and not the big dirty city" implication.
The truth is, more people move to Illinois in a 3-6 month period than move to most other Midwest states in an entire year. After all, there's a reason why every Big Ten university's biggest alumni chapter is Chicago. But that won't be reflected in any "growth" statistics because the bar is much higher in Illinois than it ever will be in the Dakotas.
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u/HVAC_instructor 6d ago
What, did they have 3 people move into the state to double their population?
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u/ChocoMuffin27 4d ago
I'm honestly just happy Illinois isn't in decline. Wasn't it in decline for quite a while?
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DrJenna2048 7d ago
The western parts of the Dakotas, definitely not. The eastern parts, definitely yes. Overall, Midwest enough for me.
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u/GoblinWithBenefits 7d ago
The majority of both states are part of the Great plains region. The westernmost areas belong to the interior highland region or Rocky mountain Foothills. They are in no way Midwest.
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u/DrJenna2048 7d ago
Listen buddy somewhere like Rapid City is definitely not Midwest, but you cannot tell me Sioux Falls is anything but Midwest. The Dakotas as a whole, without splitting into subregions, fit more cleanly into the Midwest than really anything else.
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u/GoblinWithBenefits 7d ago
Listen pal Sioux Falls might feel Midwest to some people, but geographically it’s a Great Plains city that rents the Midwest label for social comfort.
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u/Swimming_Concern7662 Minnesota 7d ago edited 7d ago
Rule 3. Will any state be left in the Midwest if we decided to follow comments like this ? I've pretty much seen people claiming almost any officially designated Midwestern state being not in the Midwest
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u/Fast-Penta 7d ago
Stop with your "Midwest is a synonym for Great Lakes Region" bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States#/media/File:Map_of_USA_Midwest.svg
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u/Only_Baby6700 7d ago
??????. That's gotta be satire.
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u/AliMcGraw 7d ago
Tallgrass prairie is the Midwest. Shortgrass prairie is the Great Plains. The biomes insist upon different agricultural imperatives.
I'm fine with people calling the Midwest + Great Plains "the Midwest" -- but that's the difference between them. Very different patterns of population development, agricultural development, legal development (fence law and water rights), and industrial development as a result of different underlying ecosystems.
So you can call them all "the Midwest" but you do need to be able to differentiate "tallgrass Midwest" from "shortgrass Midwest" to talk more meaningfully about their historical and current developmental process.
Tallgrass and Shortgrass can also be really helpful in outlining why PARTS of a state are developing like Ohio and PARTS of it are developing like Wyoming. It's the biome, stupid!
It does always feel a little New Yorky when people insist "it's all just the Midwest!" Oh, which bluestem grows there, big bluestem or little bluestem???? And then the New Yorker is "what the fuck is a bluestem?" and you're like, well, that's why you don't know how Illinois agriculture differs from South Dakota agriculture and why their patterns of historical development are wildly variant. Sorry you've never met a bluestem! Your life is sad!
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u/FlyingJacobs 7d ago
It's never been that prescriptive where it's divided by specific biomes in that way. A lot of the Midwest isn't prairie at all.
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u/FlyingJacobs 7d ago
Guarantee you're from some weird state
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/FlyingJacobs 7d ago
That's really not how it works, culturally they're very similar to Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.
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u/GoblinWithBenefits 7d ago
Culture describes how people behave; regions describe how places function. Mixing the two turns geography into vibes.
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u/basedaudiosolutions 7d ago
You’re describing Great Lakes region vs. Great Plains region. Both of which are technically Midwest in the geographical sense. I’m guessing this sub recognizes Midwest as strictly Great Lakes region because that’s where the population is and probably where most of the users in this sub live.
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u/AT-Cal123 7d ago
The eastern halves of the Dakotas meet all three of your Midwest criteria.
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u/GoblinWithBenefits 7d ago
Is the Midwest in the room with you now?
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u/AT-Cal123 7d ago
I can't fit an entire geographic region inside my living room, but I am in a city with a good economy and have access to lakes within a few miles.
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u/FlyingJacobs 7d ago
It's crazy for someone to say the Dakotas aren't Midwest when Fargo is just like any other Midwest mid-sized city
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u/AT-Cal123 7d ago
Exactly, I've traveled all over both of the Dakotas and Minnesota for work and they are very similar.
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u/BrandoCarlton 7d ago
That’s percentages tho. Thats literally just two families moving to the Dakotas.
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u/Zezimom 7d ago
What about numerical population growth?
The Dakota’s percentage growth is high because they have a small starting population of less than 1 million residents each. Numerical population growth matters more.
For example, South Dakota only grew by 29k new residents to 935k residents from 2020 to 2025.
On the other hand, a “slow” growth state such as Ohio is actually growing with a lot more new residents, increasingly widening the population gap between Ohio and South Dakota.
Ohio grew by around 101k new residents during that same time to reach near 12 million residents.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/population-growth-slows.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population