New Jersey Population Keeps Growing, Ocean County Leads with 5.58% Surge

New Jersey added residents. The population jumped 3% from 2020 to 2025, hitting 9,548,215 people, per U.S. Census Bureau data that came out this week. Ocean County outpaced every other county in the state, swelling by 5.58% across those five years.

Nine counties clocked gains topping 3%. Union County shot up 4.95%, Burlington County climbed 4.28%, and Essex County rose 4.24%. Somerset, Mercer, Gloucester, Warren, and Morris also cracked the 3% mark.

Cape May County stood alone. It bled residents, shrinking 0.75% from July 2024 to July 2025 and tumbling 1.73% since 2020 — the only spot in New Jersey where people left.

Most counties shifted little in the past year. All but Cape May inched up less than 1.49% during that 12-month stretch.

According to app.com, states around New Jersey told different stories. Connecticut grew 3.04%, with every county ticking upward. Delaware surged 6.86%. Pennsylvania barely budged, crawling up just 0.49%.

New York lost ground — the only neighbor that shrank, down 0.6%. New York City bled residents across most boroughs during the five-year window: Brooklyn dropped 2.5%, the Bronx fell 3.8%, Manhattan slid 1.3%, and Queens dipped 1.1%. Staten Island bucked the trend, growing 1.25%.

The nation's fastest-growing counties clustered in one region. Nine of the top 10 fastest-growing counties with at least 20,000 residents sat in the South, scattered across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

The census report tracked how populations moved across U.S. counties through 2025.