Chicago’s status as the third-largest city remains safe — for now — but how big is the gap and have the numbers changed in the last year?
For years, experts have predicted that the city could lose its third-place ranking to Houston, Texas, and the numbers over the years have shown concerning trends.
In the latest numbers from the U.S. Census, however, Chicago remained No. 3 in the nation for population size, and the gap between the Windy City and Houston appeared to widen.
According to the 2025 data, which was released this week, Chicago’s population climbed to 2,731,585. That’s still far behind New York’s 8,584,629 and Los Angeles’ 3,869,089.
Houston sat at 2,397,315.
The numbers were largely unchanged from the last census release. Chicago’s total grew slightly from 2,721,308 in 2024, while Houston dropped from 2024’s 2,390,125.
In 2015, experts predicted Houston could overtake Chicago as the third-largest city by 2025. At that time, estimates suggested Houston’s population could be between 2.54 million and 2.7 million by 2025, while Chicago would be around 2.5 million.
In 2024, an analysis from the Illinois Policy Institute predicted Chicago would be overtaken by Houston by 2035 “if population trends hold.”
Despite the slight change in numbers, Texas did hold the “top five fastest-growing cities in the nation,” one of which is a suburb outside Houston.
But the numbers seemed indicative of a potential new trend noted by the Census Bureau — the move to smaller towns and not big cities.
“Even where the largest cities maintained strong growth, they were often outpaced by smaller cities in the outer portions of the same metro area,” the Census release stated.
“Big-city growth slowed significantly between 2024 and 2025, with some major hubs even seeing small declines,” Matt Erickson, a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, said in a statement. “In contrast, midsized cities found a ‘Goldilocks zone’ where domestic and international migration, paired with new housing, helped prevent the sluggish growth seen in small towns and larger metropolitan centers.”
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