Michigan's Population Grew By 2 Percent The Last Decade: Census

MICHIGAN— The U.S. Census Bureau released its 2020 Census data sets Thursday after the release had been delayed four months by the pandemic.

"We are excited to reach this milestone of delivering the first detailed statistics from the 2020 Census," said acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin. "We appreciate the public's patience as Census Bureau staff worked diligently to process these data and ensure it meets our quality standards."

The census shows that Michigan's population has grown by 2 percent over the last decade, adding 193,691 residents since 2010 to boost its overall population to 10,077,331. The U.S. on the whole saw a 7.4 percent population growth

Michigan now is the 10th most populous state in the nation, after it had been No. 8 a decade ago.

Wayne County, with a population of 1,793,561, is still the state's largest county, but it's population has fallen by 1.5 percent since 2010. Oakland County, meanwhile, ranks No. 2 in population (1,274,395), and has seen a 6-percent rise in that category.

Macomb County has the third-highest population in the state, and its 881,217 people represents a 4.8-percent growth in population.

Kent County, in the western part of the state, ranks No. 4 in population in Michigan. Though its population has grown by 9.2 percent to 657,974.

The census reported Detroit's population at 670,031, which was a 6.1-percent drop from the 713,898 reported 10 years earlier. The city has continued to lose residents since it had 1.8 million people in the 1950s, according to ClickonDetroit.com.

However, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has disputed the recent count, tweeting that the Census Bureau had undercounted Detroit's population by at least 10 percent.

"We will be pursuing our legal remedies to get Detroit an accurate count," Duggan wrote on Twitter.

The mayor said the census only counted 254,000 occupied households in the city, but DTE Energy reports that nearly 280,000 residential households in Detroit currently are paying electric bills.

"The census somehow failed to count 25,000 occupied houses with running electricity," Duggan wrote.

The census reported the U.S. population as 331,449,281, which is 22,703,743 more than in 2010.