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Monday, Apr. 6, 2026

Are less than half of Colorado residents from Colorado?

Cassis Tingley, The Colorado Sun
yes

Just under 41% of Colorado residents in 2024 were born in the state, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. 

That’s 2.4 million of Colorado’s roughly 6 million residents. Most transplants from the U.S. were from California, at 407,000, and Texas, at 221,000, followed by New York, Illinois and Ohio, each the original home of at least 100,000 current Colorado residents. About 711,000 Colorado residents were from other countries. 

Migration to Colorado has slowed in recent years. 2025 saw a 71% drop in international arrivals in 2024, and the number of domestic newcomers dropped by 342%, which the State Demography Office said was partly due to the large number of Venezuelan migrants who came to Colorado from Texas and did not remain in the state. Denver bought roughly 20,000 one-way bus tickets for migrants to leave Colorado between 2022 and 2024.

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The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

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