Fort Bend County one of fastest-growing counties in Texas, United States last decade

As households across the country fill out the 2020 Census, the U.S. Census Bureau released its July 1, 2019 population estimates and data comparisons for the last decade at the end of March. The data shows that Fort Bend County was one of the fastest-growing counties in both the state and the nation, adding 226,989 people in the last decade.

From April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2019, Fort Bend County grew in population by 38.8%, from 584,699 to 811,688, ranking as the fifth-fastest-growing county in the state and the 12th-fastest in Texas based on percent growth.

While Fort Bend County did not make the list of the top ten counties in numerical growth from 2010 to 2019, neighboring Harris County did. In the last decade, Harris County’s population grew from 4,093,176 to 4,713,325. Harris County is the third-most-populous county in the nation behind only Los Angeles County in California and Cook County in Illinois.

In fact, in the last decade, six of the 10 counties with the largest population gains in the nation—Harris, Tarrant, Bexar, Dallas, Collin and Travis counties—were located in Texas.

Additionally, the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area, with a population of 7,066,141 as of July 1, 2019, is the fifth-most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. and the second-most in Texas, trailing only Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington. The Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area has added 1,145,654 residents to the region since 2010, making it the second-fastest-growing county by numerical value in the county, behind only Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington.

Throughout the year, the Census Bureau will continue to publish July 2019 data, including information on age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, according to the March news release.

The public has until mid-August to complete the 2020 census. Census data is used to allocate federal funding, to determine how many U.S. House of Representative seats a state gets and to draw congressional and state legislative districts, according to the Census Bureau’s website.