Dan Haar: Census numbers show a mixed picture for CT in battle for new residents

Connecticut seems to be settling into a good-and-bad pattern in the crucial competition to attract residents from other states, as a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau paints a mixed picture.

An estimated 5,945 more people exited Connecticut for other states than moved here from other states in the year ending July 1, 2025, the Census reported Tuesday. Over the last five years, departures outnumbered arrivals by 27,919, making Connecticut the No. 40 state for net migration between states.

That's a consistent decline, for sure, and it's happening despite claims by Gov. Ned Lamont that the moving vans have turned around for Connecticut.

But Lamont isn't entirely wrong: International migration into Connecticut was a healthy 17,534 in the year ending in mid-2025, the new numbers show, driving an overall population gain. In the five years starting July 1, 2020, a total of 110,143 folks from other countries decided to call Connecticut home.

The danger: President Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to tamp down those immigration numbers, much to the detriment of the whole country – nowhere more than Connecticut as an aging labor force fails to fill jobs. Economist Donald Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners told me Tuesday he believes those foreign arrivals could fall sharply this year and beyond.

The other reason we can forgive Lamont for his excess cheer: The net migration to and from other states since the pandemic – that loss of about 5,500 people per year – is a huge improvement over the exodus we witnessed for many years before Covid-19. Net losses in the range of 15,000 to 20,000 were not unusual.

By contrast, the states we like to compare ourselves with – you know, the rich blue ones – continue to bleed people to other states as badly as ever. Connecticut over the last five years lost three-quarters of 1% of its population to other states, when we balance the comings and goings. New York lost a whopping 5.5% including thousands a year to Connecticut; California, 4.3%, for a net loss of 1.7 million residents to other states. Massachusetts, adept at stealing our corporations, has lost 2.6% of all Bay Staters to other states since 2020.

Among the top states for attracting people and adding population, most vote red. Klepper-Smith, the economist who joined the trend by moving from Connecticut to South Carolina in semi-retirement, said we can expect that to continue, and perhaps worsen.

Klepper-Smith talks about the three T's as driving factors in where people move: taxes, temperatures and traffic. Obviously those don't favor the Northeast. Now he adds another under Trump, "namely the 'targeting' of blue states for federal spending cuts," he wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.

That could mean higher local taxes to make up for the losses, "that will, in all likelihood, prompt many to assess their long-term living situations," he wrote. "Big implications here for Northeast states!"

Balancing that pressure, of course, are the lifestyle and cultural advantages many of us see in northern, blue states, a contrast all the sharper these days.

The latest Census numbers more or less track the reports from moving companies. My colleague Nathaniel Rosenberg reported earlier this month that U-Haul said Connecticut lost more movers than it gained in 2025 for the third straight year. 

You might recall stories in late 2023 that Connecticut had gained a net 57,000 people from other states in 2022, according to the Census Bureau. I reported a few months later that it was a mistake by the agency; months after that, the Census conceded it was based on a data error.  These numbers are very hard to calculate and any given year has large margins of error.

Foreign arrivals to Connecticut, consistently in the range of 20,000 people a year (easily in the top 10 among states by percent of population) have kept Connecticut's overall population growing since the pandemic. Not by much, but enough to keep us in the middle of the pack at No. 26 since 2020.

We reached an estimated 3,688,496 residents on July 1, 2025, a gain of 2.3 percent in five years. That's a lot less than the top baker's dozen states, all of them adding at least 5.5 percent.

But do we want all that growth? I vote no if it means sprawl and congestion, which is exactly what it would mean, Bottom line: We're losing people to other states but not as many as before. And if we can somehow avoid a sharp drop in foreign immigration, we'll be in a population sweet spot. 

dhaar@hearstmediact.com