Annual Population and Household Estimates
Announcements
Final 2025 population and household estimates are now available.
As directed by Minnesota Statute
§473.24, community development researchers prepare annual population and household estimates for cities, townships, and counties within the Twin Cities region. These estimates:
- Inform funding decisions for state programs such as Local Government Aid, State Aid for Local Transportation, and the region's Fiscal Disparities Program.
- Provide local governments and other stakeholders with timely estimated counts of people, households, and housing units for small geographic areas.
- Allow community development researchers to highlight recent and relevant population and development trends in the Twin Cities region to policymakers.
Population and household estimates are reviewed by local governments before they are revised and certified by the Metropolitan Council. These estimates have a one-year lag; the most recent set was published in July 2026 and describe population and households in 2025.
2025 Population and Household Estimates
Key findings from an analysis of 2025’s population and household estimates include:
- Between 2020 and 2025, the Twin Cities region's population increased by 3.9% and households by 6.6%. Recently added households were, on average, smaller compared with the region’s overall household size (1.48 persons per household versus 2.44, respectively).
- Most recent population and household growth (2020-2025) took place in the region’s Emerging Suburban Edge where new housing construction was concentrated in the early 2020s.
- Roughly one-fifth of new growth regionwide occurred in Minneapolis and Saint Paul (combined) and another small share resulted from infill and redevelopment projects in Urban and Suburban cities.
- The U.S. Census Bureau's 2025 population data shows the state of Minnesota gained more residents than it lost to other places in the U.S. for the first time since 2018. International immigration has declined sharply, however. How shifts in broad migration patterns impact regional estimates in the coming years will be carefully assessed.
RELATED VIDEO
Principal data scientist Sam Limerick presented these key findings to the Metropolitan Council's Committee of the Whole on August 5, 2026 in more detail.
Watch the presentation video or view the slide deck (PDF).
Where to find annual population and households estimates
How we develop annual estimates
Our annual estimates use a housing stock-based model to estimate households and population. It is much easier to track the number of housing units—and estimate how many people live in them—than it is to account for births, deaths, and households moving into or out of small areas.
The most recent decennial census (now 2020) provides a count of all housing units by type that serves as a baseline for annual estimates throughout the decade. From here, we complete three main steps to produce annual estimates:
- We use residential building permits provided by local governments (and other secondary sources) to determine how many units to add or subtract from the 2020 baseline. These calculations create our annual Housing Stock Estimates.
- Next, we apply occupancy rates customized to each housing type to estimate the number of households.
- We use average household size customized to each housing type to estimate the number of people within households. Lastly, we add residents living in facilities that are not considered part of the housing stock (known as group quarters) to generate the total estimated population count.
Additional geographies available
We also prepare annual population and household estimates for census tracts, census block groups, Transportation Analysis Zones (TAZs), school districts, and ZIP codes in the Twin Cities region. This dataset (‘Annual Small Area Population and Household Estimates’) is available to download as an excel file or a spatial database on the Minnesota Geospatial Commons.