Utah News Dispatch
Over 70% of Utah’s 2025 growth was along the Wasatch Front
Residential developments in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City are pictured on Monday, July 22, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Over 50,000 people added Utah as their home address from 2023 to 2024, taking the state population to 3.5 million. Over 70% of them were along the Wasatch Front, composed of Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties.
Housing units in those counties, the most populous in the state, also grew. But, the pace of those additions didn’t match peak numbers witnessed in 2022, according to a Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute report on Wasatch Front communities.
Municipalities along the Wasatch Front added 17,970 new housing units between 2023 and 2024. That’s down from a high of 28,068 in 2022, the Gardner Institute wrote after reviewing building permit data.
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“The Wasatch Front added 36,730 new residents between 2023 and 2024, declining slightly from population growth of 42,348 between 2022 and 2023,” Eric Albers, lead author of the report, said in a statement.
Between 2011 and 2024, the population growth along the Wasatch Front has ranged from a low of 30,208 people, which was measured between 2012 and 2013, and a high of 45,716, seen between 2016 and 2017, Albers added.
However, the institute doesn’t have housing unit increase estimates for Wasatch Front counties prior to 2020.
“Over this period, housing unit growth peaked between 2021 and 2022 at 28,068,” Albers said, “and has fallen to 17,970 between 2023 and 2024.”
According to the study released Monday, Salt Lake City is for the third consecutive year leading the population growth, with 4,450 more people in 2024, the report authors wrote. The state capital also accounted for almost 54% of new housing, adding almost 3,700 units.
With these updated numbers the analysts determined that 1 in 5 new housing units are in Salt Lake City.
In the housing growth ranking, Saratoga Springs was in the top two with 1,026 more units, followed by Herriman, which added 1,017 units.
The fastest growing municipality in the area was Magna, which saw an 8% population increase in 2024. However, 8 of the 10 fastest-growing cities on the Wasatch Front were in Utah County, led by Saratoga Springs with 7.9% and Highland with 7.8%, the authors wrote.
Despite most communities’ growth, there were still some other patterns in different cities on the Wasatch Front. Three of them didn’t add any residents during the 2023-2024 period and 29 lost population.
In Salt Lake County, four cities had population declines of more than 200 people — Sandy, which lost 710 residents, Taylorsville with a decline of 357, Midvale with 289 and Kearns with 207.
While there was growth in five cities in Davis County, 11 of them lost population as well, led by North Salt Lake with a 132-person decline.
Six communities in Weber County saw growth of more than 100 residents. But, six municipalities also experienced modest population decreases, with Roy losing the most residents, 133 people.
