In New York, Frank Sinatra says, they want to be a part of it. Chicago, he claims, has all that jazz. But it turns out pc28is where people are going.
pc28was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in Canada and the U.S. for the second consecutive year and saw an estimated population increase of nearly 269,000 people from July 2023 to July 2024, according to data from Statistics Canada and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The pc28area — which StatCan defines as stretching from Oakville to Ajax and north to the shores of Lake Simcoe — outpaced the New York City area, second on the list, by 56,000 new people. After a slight drop during the pandemic, Toronto’s population has grown faster over the last two years than at any time since 2001.
Domestically, though, more people are still moving away from the pc28area than to it — a trend one expert said poses long-term problems as young people and families leave Toronto.
The pc28area’s total population is now 7.1 million with the city of pc28at 3,025,647.
“These are staggering growth figures,” said Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the University of Toronto. “They will have transformative impacts.”
The rapid expansion is helping fuel the city’s economy and fill jobs in industries such as construction and health care, while also making the city more vibrant, Siemiatycki said. But it is also increasing strain on transportation infrastructure and the housing market, which is already struggling to keep up with demand.
“You can’t expand capacity for subways or roads or provide more housing or more health care quickly,” said Frank Clayton, a senior research fellow at pc28Metropolitan University’s Centre of Urban Research and Land Development who . “All these things take time.”
Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary were also among the fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Montreal ranked fifth with 132,000 more people living there, while Vancouver came in sixth with a net growth of 128,000. Calgary was eighth at 100,000.
As a percentage of total population, Toronto’s growth was less than Calgary and Vancouver.
The growth is driven by Canada’s high levels of international immigration in recent years, Clayton said.
Toronto’s net loss in migration within Ontario and between provinces may pose issues down the road, Siemiatycki said.
In 2021, 47 per cent of pc28residents were born in Canada. According to the Census, there were 1,286,140 immigrants in Toronto, or 46.6 percent of the population. In Canada overall, immigrants made up 23.0 per cent of the population.
“We’ve been really successful at attracting newcomers from … outside the country,” Siemiatycki said. “But having people stay for the long-term and making this a vibrant and attractive place where they can see a long-term future has become challenging.”
By comparison, Southern U.S. areas that rank high on the list — including Houston in third, Dallas in fourth, Miami in seventh and Phoenix in 10th — owe their growth primarily to internal migration within the U.S., Clayton said.
- Diana Zlomislic
pc28is an attractive place for newcomers because of its job prospects and large immigrant communities, Clayton said.
“(If) you’ve got a friend, an acquaintance, a former neighbour who moved to Toronto, you tend to want to come to pc28too,” Clayton said. “It’s probably built on itself.”
Toronto’s surge is remarkable for its contrast to other northern cities like Chicago and Detroit, which have not seen such significant recent growth.
“Toronto’s just truly amazing that the economy has done so well compared to, say, Chicago,” Clayton said. “Chicago, just up until this last year … (has had) very little growth and job creation.”
StatCan calculates population growth by using its most recent census data and adjusting for people missing or added, births, deaths, immigration and migration.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates growth by adding births and net migration, then subtracting deaths.
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