The Central Valley saw the most population growth throughout the state in 2025, despite Stanislaus and Merced counties recording losses, according to a snapshot of statewide population estimates for cities and counties as of Jan. 1, 2026 that was released this month by the California Department of Finance.

Stanislaus County lowered in population by 0.2%. Turlock (-135), Ceres (243), Modesto (478), Newman (80) and Waterford (17) all lost residents, while Hughson saw a 2.6% increase and Oakdale, Patterson and Riverbank recorded slight increases.

Merced County saw a population loss of 0.1%. Atwater, Dos Palos, Gustine and Livingston all recorded population losses, while Los Banos and Merced saw slight gains.

Two of California’s fast-growing cities in 2025 were in South San Joaquin County. Mountain House was the 4th fastest growing at 5.64 percent and Lathrop was the 5th fastest growing at 5.5 percent.

Manteca was the 15th fastest growing at 1.5 percent.

And when it came to just those cities with a population of 30,000 or more, Mountain House was the state’s fastest growing city and Lathrop the second fastest growing city. California has 483 cities.

The snapshot of statewide population estimates for cities and counties as of Jan. 1, 2026 was released this month by the California Department of Finance.

Manteca was ranked first statewide for the total number of single-family homes built at 809 while Lathrop was third at 765.

Lathrop also ranked fifth among California cities under 300,000 residents for the largest numeric population increase.

Lathrop added 2,151 residents, Mountain House 1,639 residents, Manteca 1,560 residents, and Tracy 929 residents.

With 99,705 residents, Tracy is posed to surpass the 100,000-population mark by year’s end.

Manteca is likely to top 100,000 residents by the end of 2027.

Tracy is the fourth largest city in the three county Northern San Joaquin Valley region consisting of San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties.

Stockton lost 64 residents and now has a population of 322,436 while Modesto lost 475 residents and is now at 220,048.

The state’s 10 largest counties remain Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, Contra Costa, and Fresno, with each having more than one million residents. These 10 counties represent 72 percent of California’s population. Half of the 10 counties with one million or more people have positive population growth, with Sacramento, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Clara and San Bernardino among the gainers. Sacramento led with an increase of 9,000 persons.

Statewide housing growth declined slightly from 0.84 percent in 2024 to 0.77 percent in 2025. California added 115,165 housing units on net, bringing total housing in the state to 15,064,131 units. This marks the first time California has recorded over 15 million housing units. This number includes the addition of 29,710 accessory dwelling units (ADUs), an 11.42 percent increase over the previous year, and the loss of 11,406 housing units due to fires, including 11,160 housing units lost to the Eaton and Palisades fires.

New construction added 116,471 housing units with 58,529 single family housing units, 56,855 multi-family housing units, and 1,087 mobile homes. ADUs accounted for 27.9 percent of the state’s new single-family housing (16,366 ADUs), 2.3 percent of the new multi-family housing (1,328 ADUs), and 15.2 percent of total new housing (17,694 units). County and city housing highlights include: • Yuba had the highest housing growth (2.32 percent) of all counties, followed by: Madera, Del Norte, Placer, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Colusa, Santa Clara, Riverside, and Yolo.

Statewide trends

A full year of restrictive federal policy changes cut legal international migration to California by more than half in 2025 and drove a slight decline (less than 1/7th of 1%) in California’s overall population.

Absent these changes, California’s population as of Jan. 12 would have seen a slight increase of 66,000 over the same period. Because of these federal changes, the state experienced a small decline of 54,000.

The 0.14-percent decline to 39,593,000 marks the first year of population loss after three consecutive years of population increases following the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 2021 to 2024, California’s growth in net international migration was driven by both legal immigrants and the expansion of international humanitarian migration programs.

Net legal international migration has been a significant driver of California’s overall population, offsetting declines in natural increase — the net number of births and deaths — and net domestic migration from California.

While natural increase added in 2025, by 108,200 persons, it is down 4,500 from 2024.

Net domestic out-migration from California increased to 288,600 in 2025.

Other highlights of the January 1, 2026 city and county population report include:

• Population growth rates ranged from a high of 1.39 percent in Placer County to a low of -1.9 percent in Lassen County. The next five fastest growing counties based on percentage growth were Yuba (1.24 percent), San Benito (0.69 percent), Madera (0.68 percent), San Joaquin (0.63 percent), and Sacramento (0.58 percent).
• Thirteen counties gained housing at or above 1.0 percent.
• Within counties ranked by net housing gains, Los Angeles (11,260), San Diego (8,635), Sacramento (5,048), Santa Clara (2,772), and San Jose (2,262) added the most housing units in 2025.
• Larger, densely populated urban areas built most of the multi-family housing throughout the state. Los Angeles led the state, gaining 7,061 multi-family units, comprising 62.7 percent of their net housing growth, followed by San Diego (6,179 for 71.6 percent), Sacramento (3,282 for 65 percent), and Santa Clara (2,700 for 97.4 percent).
• Conversely, single-family housing is more likely to be built further inland in typically more suburban cities. Cities with a high proportion of single-family growth include Bakersfield (1,432 for 86.1 percent), Roseville (1,151 for 54.7 percent), Elk Grove (1,138 for 60.3 percent), Irvine (814 for 63.8 percent), Fontana (806 for 83 percent), Manteca (809 for 100 percent), and Lathrop (765 for 94.8 percent).
• The top five cities where housing production drove population growth include: Paradise (9.2 percent) in Butte County, Crescent City (6.2 percent) in Del Norte County, Mountain House (5.6 percent) in San Joaquin County, Lathrop (5.5 percent) in San Joaquin County, and Buellton (5.4 percent) in Santa Barbara County.