The Denver Gazette reports that Colorado’s population growth has slowed sharply, with the state adding just 33,151 residents from 2024 to 2025, one of the lowest annual growth cycles of the past decade. The Common Sense Institute study cited in the article says Colorado’s annual population growth has fallen about 60% since 2015, when the state added 83,036 residents.
The remaining growth is concentrated in fewer places. Weld County added 8,651 residents from 2024 to 2025 and has grown nearly 33% over the past decade, while Douglas and Adams counties also posted gains. Meanwhile, Jefferson County lost 600 residents, Boulder County lost 556, Eagle County lost 481, and Arapahoe, Jefferson, and Denver counties posted net migration losses.
Plain, pure and simple: this is the result of Democrat policy. Our young people cannot afford to start here, our old people cannot afford to finish here, and new people can no longer afford to move here. For years, Colorado’s ruling Democrats acted like people would keep moving here no matter how expensive, congested, regulated, taxed, and generally annoying they made the place. Now growth is slowing, metro counties are losing people, and the bill for that arrogance is starting to show up.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado added only 33,151 residents from 2024 to 2025, compared with 83,036 from 2015 to 2016. That is not a blip. That is the sound of Colorado’s welcome mat getting repo’d.
- Net arrivals to Colorado dropped 80% over the decade, from 68,844 in 2015 to 13,568 in 2025. Apparently “come for the mountains, stay for the fees, mandates, traffic, and housing panic” is not the sales pitch Democrats thought it was.
- Weld County remains a growth engine, adding 8,651 residents in the latest period and growing nearly 33% over the decade. Funny how places that still value work, energy, land, and basic practicality keep looking attractive.
- Jefferson, Boulder, Eagle, Arapahoe, and Denver are flashing warning lights. Some of the counties that spent years treating growth like moral validation are now learning that people can pack a U-Haul and leave the lecture behind.
- The report authors did not identify specific causes, but said housing affordability, job location, and remote-work patterns could affect the numbers. Fine. They did not pin the tail on the donkey. I will. Democrat policy made Colorado less affordable, less livable, and less competitive.
My Bottom Line
Colorado’s slowdown is not some cosmic mystery. This is what happens when Democrats spend years making housing harder to build, energy more expensive, business more complicated, transportation more miserable, public safety more negotiable, and daily life more expensive, then act surprised when people stop treating Colorado like the promised land.
For years, Democrat planners, legislators, activists, and bureaucrats treated endless population growth as both moral validation and a revenue stream. More people meant more taxes, more fees, more programs, more studies, more “equity frameworks,” more density sermons, and more bureaucrats explaining why regular Coloradans were too simple to understand their own grocery bills.
They wanted California policies without California consequences. Cute theory. Bad spreadsheet. You cannot import the taxes, mandates, regulations, housing dysfunction, anti-energy politics, and smug governing style, then pretend the cost-of-living crisis arrived here on a weather balloon.
Now the numbers are telling the truth. Young families are getting priced out. Seniors are getting squeezed. Working people are looking elsewhere. New arrivals are slowing. Colorado does not have a scenery problem. It has a Democrat policy problem. Until the people running this state stop treating affordability like a slogan and start treating it like oxygen, more Coloradans will decide the view is beautiful, but the bill is ridiculous.
Source: The Denver Gazette
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