The main motor: Latinos accounted for nearly half of Utah's growth from 2020 to 2025

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Latinos drove Utah's population growth, accounting for nearly half of new residents from 2020 to 2025.
Latinos were the main growth motor in Salt Lake, Weber and Davis counties while white people were the key spur in Utah and Washington counties.
Numerically, white people are the largest racial group but their share of the population fell in the five-year span.

SALT LAKE CITY — Latinos are still the main motor behind overall population growth in Utah, accounting for nearly half of the state's new residents since 2020, according to new population estimates broken down by race and ethnicity.

Among Utah's most populated counties, Latinos were the main motor for growth in Davis, Salt Lake and Weber counties between 2020 and 2025 while white people were the main factor in Utah and Washington counties. In all five of the counties, though, the white non-Hispanic population declined as a share of the overall population in the five-year span, same as in Utah as a whole, indicating the gradual racial and ethnic diversification of the state, an ongoing trend.

The U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday released new county by county population estimates for 2025, broken down by race and ethnicity, providing the snapshot of change.

Here are some of the highlights:

Largest minority: Latinos are the largest racial or ethnic minority, as has been the case, with the concentration continuing to edge up.

From 2020 to 2025, the group's share of the population increased from 19.7% to 22.9% in Salt Lake County, from 18.7% to 20.7% in Weber County, from 13.3% to 17.7% in Tooele County and from 13.5% to 16.3% in Utah County. The total went from 11.4% to 13.5% in Washington County, from 10.9% to 13.2% in Davis County and from 11.2% to 13% in Summit County.

In the state as a whole, the Latino concentration grew from 15.1% to 17.6% of the population, or 496,811 to 623,494, up 126,683 or 25.5% in the five years. The state's population as a whole went up by 254,934 in the period, from roughly 3.28 million to 3.54 million, and Latinos accounted for 49.7% of the increase.

White population: White, non-Hispanic people are still the largest racial group in Utah by far, but the concentration continues to edge downward due to slower growth than other groups.

In Salt Lake County in the five-year span, the concentration fell from 68.6% to 64.3% with the figure going from 74.7% to 72.2% in Weber County, 81% to 75.1% in Tooele County and 79.5% to 75.6% in Utah County. The figure went from 81.5% to 78.1% in Davis County, 82.6% to 79.8% in Washington County and 84.1% to 81.5% in Summit County.

The white population actually fell in Salt Lake County by more than 30,000 people between 2020 and 2025 to 784,528. It dipped by around 600 in Summit County to 35,141.

In Utah as a whole, the white population, while it increased, dipped from 76.3% of the overall headcount to 72.9% due to faster growth by other population segments. In real numbers, the white population in the state grew by 75,365 to 2.58 million as of 2025, up 3% from 2020. That increase represents 29.6% of the overall growth in the state in the five-year span.

Asian population: The Asian population grew by 20,358 across Utah between 2020 and 2025, from 79,967 to 100,325, up 25.5%. As a percent, the Asian population represented 2.8% of Utah's population in 2025, up from 2.4% in 2020.

Salt Lake County was home to the largest share of Asians, 60,570 as of 2025, followed by Utah County, home to 15,439.

Black population: Utah's Black population increased from 38,468 in 2020 to 46,019 in 2025, up 7,551 or 19.6%. As a percent, Black people accounted for 1.3% of Utah's population in 2025, up from 1.2% in 2020.

Salt Lake County was home to the largest bloc of Black people, 25,022, followed by Utah County, 6,312.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.