June 26, 2025
Originally published in The Baltimore Sun.
The decrease in the Black population in Baltimore City is likely due to people leaving the city for suburban areas and natural population decline, or more deaths than births, said Michael Bader, the Director of the 21st Century Cities Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.
Baltimore County’s number of Black residents increased by 1.4% between July 2023 and July 2024. The county overall had the Baltimore region’s largest increase in the proportion of residents who are nonwhite or Hispanic during that period, rising 0.87 percentage points to 49.5%. Conversely, Baltimore City had the state’s smallest increase in the share of its population that’s nonwhite, inching up 0.05 percentage points to 73.5%.
Bader said that the increase in the Hispanic population in Baltimore City is likely due to immigration.
“People tend to move when they’re younger, and when they’re younger, they are also at ages where they have children,” Bader said. “The combination of folks moving to economic centers in Baltimore and then having kids is probably what’s leading to the growth of the Hispanic population in Baltimore.”