Baltimore’s Black population shrank again last year, new estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau show. The loss was offset by a similar surge in Hispanic people flocking to the city, but not by enough to end years of population decline.

The overall population dropped by nearly 5,000 residents, even as the number of households kept going up. Baltimore City now has a population of 565,239, with 247,232 households.

Baltimore lost an estimated 11,600 non-Hispanic Black residents in 2023. The data comes from the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey, released Thursday.

It was the seventh-largest year-over-year decrease for any county in the United States with at least 65,000 people, the only counties included in Thursday’s data release. Prince George’s County, near D.C., saw the eighth-largest decrease in its Black, non-Hispanic population.

Baltimore City and Baltimore County were the only counties in Maryland that lost population last year, and both would have shrunk a lot more if not for thousands of new Hispanic residents. Baltimore County’s population fell by about 1,500 people.

The Baltimores each gained more than 10,000 Hispanic residents last year, and Maryland as a whole saw its population buoyed by an influx of international migrants in 2023. It’s not surprising those people would be Hispanic, said Michael Bader, a demographer and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University.

“We know in Maryland that population would have declined except for international migration [in 2023], and a large portion of international migrants to the state and to this area are Hispanic,” he said.

For Baltimore City, the new estimates show a loss in its non-Hispanic Black, white and Asian populations, but slight growth for multiracial individuals and people who identified as “some other race.” But by far the biggest growth came in the Hispanic population. From 2022 to 2023, estimates show, the city’s Hispanic population grew by more than 10,000 people — a 28.9% increase in just one year.

This new data doesn’t say where former Black residents went, but estimates released earlier this year show that more people moved from Baltimore City to other parts of the U.S. than vice versa. Most counties in Maryland also lost Black residents.

Only four counties saw significant Black population growth last year: Montgomery and Charles counties, near Washington, D.C., and Baltimore County and Harford County, northeast of Baltimore.

The number of households is still increasing

All this population loss is happening at a time when the number of households in Baltimore City is going up. Baltimore added about 5,000 total households in 2023, according to this data, the most new households of any Maryland county. That’s a 1.8% increase in one year. The data shows Baltimore had more Black households in 2023 than in 2022, but fewer white ones.

Overall, the city is seeing more, but smaller, households, with fewer people living under the same roof. This is a trend that’s been happening for a while.

Meanwhile, in the county

On the other side of the coin is Baltimore County, which also lost population in 2023. While the county’s population loss wasn’t as stark as the city’s, Thursday’s release showed that its population decline came mostly from its white and multiracial populations. Baltimore County lost about 1,500 people overall last year, with a loss of roughly 8,500 white residents. That was second only to Anne Arundel County, which lost more than 11,000 white residents in 2023, according to these estimates.

Baltimore County also gained about 1,800 non-Hispanic Black residents and nearly 2,200 Asian residents in 2023, according to this data.

Baltimore County now has a population of 844,703.

For the last decade-plus, Baltimore County’s Black population has grown, ballooning from 208,000 in 2010 to nearly 260,000 in 2022 after many Black city residents moved to the suburbs.

Like Baltimore City, the county’s population loss would have been much worse if not for the large growth in its Hispanic population. That group grew by 11,500 people in 2023, a percent increase of about 21%.

And while Baltimore City continued adding households in 2023, the county saw the opposite. It lost nearly 6,000 households, the largest loss of households of any county in the state.

Migration is buoying the state’s population

Most places in Maryland lost both white and Black residents in 2023. The state lost about 20,000 Black residents and 26,000 white residents. Its Black population loss was the fifth-highest of any state in the nation. But Maryland’s population still grew slightly.

That was true elsewhere in the state, too.

Anne Arundel County grew in 2023, but lost nearly 10,000 white residents. It also lost Black residents. And Howard County’s trend was similar, though not as drastic.

This release has a relatively large margin of error for population estimates, especially among racial groups that include fewer people. The Census Bureau reports 90% confidence that the estimates fall within their margin of error figures, but in some cases those ranges can be quite wide. The figures provided are estimates, and exact numbers shouldn’t be taken as hard and fast population counts. In the cases discussed here, the figures represent long-standing trends in population change in Maryland.