Mapping the Hollowing of the United States

The American population is moving south and west. You can see that migration writ large in the US Population Growth Atlas, an interactive map showing how the populations of every US county and state have changed between 1980 and 2025.

The most striking feature of the map is the broad band of population decline running through the middle of the country. From the Dakotas and Montana, south through Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma and into parts of West Texas, large numbers of counties are coloured red or orange. It is an “Emptying Middle” separating the rapidly growing populations of the coasts and the Sun Belt.

Elsewhere the picture is very different. Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and much of Texas are dominated by green, as are Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington and Oregon. California also remains predominantly green. The map reveals the remarkable extent to which American population growth over the past 45 years has been concentrated in the South and West.

The data for the map comes from the US Census Bureau Population Estimates Program. A date control allows you to view population change for a custom period, while clicking on an individual county or state displays a graph showing how its population has changed over the selected date range.

Perhaps the most revealing feature of the map is this “Emptying Middle”. The broad expanse of declining counties across the Great Plains extends eastwards into the Rust Belt and Industrial Midwest, with red and orange counties scattered across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Together, these areas highlight the uneven geography of American population change: with many rural and former industrial communities across the middle of the country having experienced decades of population decline.