Boston region population now at nearly 4.9 million

The Boston region’s population was 4,875,390 as of July 1, 2018, according to Census Bureau estimates released in mid-April 2019.

That figure represented a sizable jump from 2010, when the regional population stood at 4,552,598, according to the bureau. It was 4,844,597 as of July 1, 2017, too.

That latest 2018 estimate makes the Boston region—officially the Boston-Cambridge-Newton MA-NH metropolitan region—the 10th most populous in the United States. It’s about a million residents behind the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas.

Interestingly perhaps, each of the 10 most populous metro areas saw increases since 2010 in number of residents. The rises, in these areas and elsewhere where that the Census Bureau tracks, were due to migration and to natural increase (i.e., basically the birth rate minus the death rate).

See the below screenshot from the Census Bureau for a sharper breakdown of the top 10.

Middlesex County—that broad swath of land that includes dozens of municipalities to the west and north of Boston, including Cambridge and Somerville—was the most populous county in the Boston regional footprint. It had 1,614,714 people as of July 1, 2018, an increase from just over 1.5 million in 2010.

Suffolk County, which Boston dominates, had 807,252 residents by July 1, 2018, up from around 722,000 in 2010.