photo by: Adobe Stock

Lawrence and surrounding Douglas County are shown in this undated aerial photograph.

Douglas County officially was on the decline last year.

The county posted a small, but rare, drop in population in 2025, according to new estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday. Douglas County also was unique in one regard: It was the only urban county in the state that posted a decline in population for the year.

The county’s population fell by 19 people, or 0.02%, to a total of 120,920 people, according to the Census report.

The slowdown in population coincides with the city of Lawrence posting new record lows in single family building permits in both 2024 and 2025. The Census Bureau report measured population from July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025, so the latest report overlapped with portions of both of the record-low building years in Lawrence.

Population totals just for the city limits of Lawrence haven’t yet been released. But Thursday’s report may be a sign that Lawrence is likely to post a population decline when the Census Bureau releases totals for cities in May. Lawrence — with about 80% of the county’s population — historically has been the biggest driver of population changes in the county.

What’s known now is that Douglas County saw slower growth than many of its neighbors and all of the state’s urban counties. Among neighboring counties, Douglas County fared better than the small, rural communities of Osage and Jefferson counties, which lost population at a rate of 0.34% and 0.06%, respectively.

But while Douglas County was losing 19 residents in 2025, neighboring Johnson County was gaining more than 6,000 residents and Shawnee County added nearly 400 people. Leavenworth added 246 people and Franklin County to the south added 54.

When looking at the state’s urban counties, each of them added at least 245 new residents, except for Douglas. Here’s a look at those numbers.

• Johnson: up 0.96%, up 6,074 people

• Sedgwick: up 0.76%, up 4,047 people

• Riley: up 0.73%, up 526 people

• Wyandotte: up 0.43%, up 727 people

• Leavenworth: up 0.29%, up 246 people

• Shawnee: up 0.22%, up 385 people

• Douglas: down 0.02%, down 19 people

A quick note on the list above: Riley County is not technically designated an urban county in Kansas, but it is in some ways most similar to Douglas County due to the presence of Kansas State University. The Census Bureau does count university students as residents, as long as they live in the community the majority of the year.

During 2025, KU posted record enrollment numbers on the Lawrence campus, but the numbers apparently weren’t enough to make up for the significant slowdown in the new housing market. As we’ve reported, Lawrence’s slump in single family housing construction has been deep and long. The city issued just 36 building permits for single family homes in 2025. That was well below the record low set in 2024, which had 57 single family permits. The previous low was set in 2022, with 79 permits.

Lawrence’s building permit records date back to 1956. They show that 2025 was only the fifth time that the city built fewer than 100 new single family homes, with the other years being 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2011.

Nationally, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday that growth was slower in 2025 than in 2024 in a majority of counties in the U.S.. For many counties, a driving factor of the slowdown was fewer international residents locating in counties.

But that wasn’t the case in Douglas County. There actually were 599 more international residents who came into the county than left the county in 2025, according to the Census report. The biggest driver of Douglas County’s population decline was the number of U.S. residents deciding to leave Douglas County. The “domestic migration” numbers in Thursday’s report shows the number of U.S. residents leaving Douglas County exceeded the number coming in by 729 people.

Douglas County had the second largest decline in domestic migration of any county in the state. Only Wyandotte had a larger drop, with a net loss of nearly 1,000 people.

In its favor, Douglas County did have more births than deaths, with births outnumbering deaths by 104. Of Kansas’ 105 counties, only 34 had births that outnumbered deaths. They were, from highest to lowest: Johnson; Sedgwick; Wyandotte; Geary; Ford; Riley; Finney; Seward; Pottawatomie; Leavenworth; Ellis; Douglas; Miami; Lyon; Thomas; Grant; Gray; Hamilton; Haskell; Kearny; Wichita; Stevens; Butler; Wallace; Greeley; Scott; Meade; Coffey; Morton; Nemaha; Neosho; Barton; Sheridan; Stafford; Gove; Washington.

Other items of note from Thursday’s report include:

• Johnson County remains the most populous county in the state, with 619,693 residents. Only five counties have more than 100,000 people. Sedgwick, 524,617; Shawnee, 178,434; Wyandotte, 167,337; and Douglas, 119,527.

• Johnson County added the most number of people with a gain of more than 6,000 people. Sedgwick was next with a little more than 4,000. Nobody else topped the 1,000 mark, although Geary — home to Junction City and Fort Riley — added 873.

• Geary, with its U.S. Army presence, had the top growth rate in the state at 2.4%. Others in the top five were: Stafford County, home to St. John in central Kansas, 2.1%; Coffey County, home to Burlington and the state’s lone nuclear power plant, 1.6%; Miami County, south of Kansas City, 1.2%; Pottawatomie County, just north of Riley County and K-State, 1.2%.

• Greeley County was the state’s least populous, with 1,182 residents. It is one of seven counties with less than 2,000 people: Stanton; Clark; Comanche; Hodgeman; Lane; and Wallace.

• Ford County, home to Dodge City, lost the most residents in the state, 294. Finney County and Montgomery County, were the only other two counties to lose more than 200 people in population.

• The largest rate of decline in the state was just under 3%, with Edwards County, northeast of Dodge City, declining by 2.9% or 81 people.