Some things never change. But America’s cities are transforming — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Since the late 2010s, a range of economic, cultural, and political forces have dramatically shifted not only the cities in which Americans choose to live and work but also life within these cities. Between changes in population, GDP, household income, real estate prices, employment rates, and job creation, plenty of American metros are unrecognizable from their former selves.
We wanted to see which cities have undergone the most change in the past few years. Taking a 5-year snapshot of multiple metrics, we mapped the changes and ranked 191 American metro areas with populations over 250,000 by their rate of transformation.
Here’s which American cities have seen the most and least dramatic changes over the past few years.
Key Takeaways:
- All the most-changed cities saw change in the form of rapid growth: increasing economic activity, elevating salaries, and gaining newcomers.
- Boise, ID, is the most-changed U.S. city: the 2nd biggest change in employment, with +22.1% more employed persons in its economy in 2024 vs. 2019. With a 13.1% population increase over the same period, Boise’s employment opportunities even outpace its growth.
- The U.S. South dominates the most-changed list, ranking in 8 of the top 10 placements. At the same time, Southern cities also dominate the least-changed list, grabbing 8 of the 10 bottom spots.
- Lafayette, LA, is the least-changed U.S. city, gaining 3.2% in population, with the lowest median real estate increase in the country at just 1.9%.
- Of the nation’s top economic hubs, Austin, TX, is the most-changed. Among American cities with the strongest GDPs, it has the highest relative population increase. Austin has also added a whopping 25% new employed persons, more than anywhere else in the country.
- The least-changed big city in the country is New Orleans, LA. Its population grew by only 2.2% over a 5 year period, while also seeing 2.47% fewer employed persons. At the same time, NOLA home values are rising more slowly than everywhere else in the country, with the exception of its neighborLafayette, LA.
America’s 10 Most Changed Cities: 8 of the 10 Are in the South
When it comes to big change, the U.S. South knows how to adapt.
The Southern region dominates the top ten list of America’s most-changed cities, landing 8 placements. Among those are three cities in the Carolinas: Raleigh, NC; Wilmington, NC; and Myrtle Beach, SC. Indeed, 2024 searches in the moveBuddha Moving Cost Calculator show that South and North Carolina were the two U.S. states with the highest ratio of prospective movers looking to move in vs. out.
Rapid growth in the top 10 cities has come with real estate sticker shock, but also powerful job creation. Highly changed cities like Austin, TX; Boise, ID; Huntsville, AL; Fayetteville, AR; and Provo, UT saw some of the country’s biggest jumps in employed persons.
Meanwhile, Myrtle Beach, SC; Lakeland, FL; Austin, TX; Provo, UT; and Boise City, ID are all among the top population gainers by percentage. The high rates of people moving to these cities are likely motivated at least in part by the promise of a healthy job market and higher earning potential.
College towns are prominent on the most-changed list, with more move-ins than can be accounted for by freshmen alone. There’s BYU in Provo, University of Texas at Austin, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and North Carolina State and Shaw Universities in Raleigh, as well as Duke and UNC in the greater “Research Triangle.”
#1 Boise & #2 Provo: Mountain West Metros Take the Top 2 Spots
In #1, Boise, ID, annual growth for salaries in the city outpaced Idaho as a whole last year. With 22.12% more employed people in the metro than in 2018, and 50% more new businesses established in 2022 vs. 2017, Boiseans are enjoying a thriving local economy.
Another Mountain West city that’s blossomed into a thriving metropolis in the past 5 years is Provo, UT. While, along with Boise, it also sees higher-than-average home prices, this once off-the-beaten-path mountain town has seen an almost 14% population growth, more than 16% employment growth, and an astronomical 72% increase in jobs created from new businesses opened in 2022 compared to 2017.
America’s 10 Least Changed Cities: 4 are in Louisiana
Despite the last decade of global turbulence, some American cities have remained mostly unchanged. While our most-changed cities ranking surfaced a high number of cities in the South, the same is also true for the least-changed cities. 8 of the 10 most unaltered cities are located in the Gulf Coast region of the U.S., with two in Texas and four in Louisiana.
While the region has experienced some of the nation’s biggest changes, it’s also home to many of the nation’s most static metro areas. This seeming contradiction suggests that growth and prosperity in the South are not equally distributed, with some metros reaping the lion’s share of jobs, newcomers, and overall prosperity, leaving other cities in the region to stagnate at disproportionately high rates.
All four Louisiana cities on the list experienced below-average population growth between 2018 and 2023 (+2.5% national average). Low population growth seems to correlate with a stagnating economy, as well. For instance, the population of Lafayette has increased by only 0.3% over a five year period, while also gaining only 0.57% in its employment rate and seeing only 2% more new businesses in the region.
The red-headed stepchild of this bottom 10 list of the most unchanged cities is the Big Apple itself. And while New York may feel like a surprising result, statistically speaking, its massive population would require truly seismic changes to shift factors like real estate prices across millions of units. In other words, it takes a lot of change to make a dent in a market this big.
The Nation’s 50 Biggest GDP Cities: Who’s Booming and Who’s Stalling?
It stands to reason that more movers would be drawn to economic powerhouse cities where jobs and opportunities are abundant. But the changing face of the country’s largest economies isn’t equally distributed.
In other words, being big doesn’t always attract a higher influx of newcomers, nor is it necessarily a recipe for rapid economic growth.
Among cities in the top 50 nationwide for GDP, we found which have changed the most and which haven’t.
The Most Changed of America’s Top GDP Cities: Which Economic Powerhouses Have Seen the Greatest Transformation?
Big cities in the South are attracting new growth, and it’s changing the economic landscape even of existing economic hubs. Today, Raleigh, Austin, and Charlotte are all in the top five cities with the biggest population increases since 2018. They’re also in the top half for the biggest housing cost increases over that same time period.
While the South’s economic powerhouses once offered bargains to house hunters, their ability to attract newcomers based on low costs has fallen dramatically as competition has risen.
The Least Changed of America’s Top GDP Cities: Where Has Growth Stalled?
Relative to their populations, big cities don’t always attract the highest proportion of interest from newcomers, nor do they create the most jobs year-over-year or employ the most people. Many of the nation’s most populous cities are the least changed among the country’s largest metro economies.
Stagnation among large metros isn’t confined to one particular region. While New Orleans is the least changed, it’s the only entrant in the South. Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, and West Coast contenders are also seeing slow population growth and fewer jumps in employment and housing costs.
In the Big Easy, the population fell by 2.6% over a five-year period, more slowly than its modest employment gains of 3.41%. There are even 5.44% more people working in newly created jobs than there were in 2018, though housing prices are flat, rising not even 2% over 2019.
Conclusion: Changes Bring Prosperity in a Rapidly Evolving Economy
As metros gain people, they tend to gain economically, too. A larger tax base can finance new schools, construction, and services, thereby creating new jobs and business opportunities which in turn grow the economy and tax base even more.
But not everyone’s getting a makeover.
Some stagnant cities, particularly in the Gulf Coast region, have seen weak population growth, few new jobs, and less change in the salaries workers can find there. This creates a vicious cycle for local economies. The challenge for slower-growing metros isn’t just bringing new people in, it’s giving them reasons to stay and put down roots.
Methodology
We examined data for 191 metropolitan statistical areas with populations over 250,000 that had sufficient data across all five measured factors for the most recent five-year period:
- Population (2018-2023)
- Median household income (2018-2023)
- Employment counts (2019-2024)
- Home values (Zillow) (2019-2024)
- Job creation from new business openings (2017-2022)
We calculated percentage changes for each five-year period across all five categories. We then calculated which metros had seen the greatest change across that time span. The ranking is based on the average of change scores for all five categories. This composite average was scaled from 0 to 10, with 10 indicating the most changed.
See below for the full ranking of 191 U.S. metro areas: