Utah's Black population went up 89%, but the count remains one of the smallest in the nation

Highland High School’s Steppers perform as part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Week activities at Westminster University in Salt Lake City Jan. 23. Utah's Black population increased by 89% from 2010 to 2023.

Highland High School’s Steppers perform as part of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Week activities at Westminster University in Salt Lake City Jan. 23. Utah's Black population increased by 89% from 2010 to 2023. (Laura Seitz, Deseret News)


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KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Utah's small Black population grew 89% from 2010 to 2023, reaching 72,756.
  • Despite the growth, Utah ranks 40th in terms of the size of the Black population among the U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
  • Nationally, 48.3 million people identified as Black in 2023, 14.4% of the U.S. population.

WASHINGTON — Utah's small Black population grew at a faster clip than in most other U.S. states, according to new data released by the Pew Research Center.

Still, the population here remains one of the smallest among the 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau figures crunched by Pew, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, the Black population in Utah totaled 72,756 as of 2023, according to one-year American Community Survey estimates. That's up 89% from the figure for 2010, 38,539, tops among places that had at least 25,000 Black residents as of 2010.

Next, said Pew, came Arizona, Nevada and Minnesota, with 60% increases since 2010.

"The Black population has grown fastest in states that historically have not had many Black residents," said the Pew report, released last Thursday. In fact, the percentage increases in the Black population were actually higher in smaller North Dakota, 204%; South Dakota, 97%; and Maine 91%; but the 2010 counts in each of the three states fell below the 25,000 base set by Pew.

The sharp percentage increase in Utah notwithstanding, the state ranks 40th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the number of Black residents, compared to 41st in 2010. The concentration of the Black population, 2.1% of Utah's total headcount as of 2023, represents a jump from 1.4% in 2010. Still, in both years, the state ranked 48th, ahead of just Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

Latinos are the largest ethnic or racial minority in Utah, around 16% of the population as of 2023.

Nationally, 48.3 million people in the United States identified as Black in 2023, 14.4% of the population. That's up 33% from 36.2 million in 2000, Pew said.

"The Black American population is diverse. This group consists of people with varied racial and ethnic identities and experiences. It includes those who say their race is Black, either alone or in combination with other racial backgrounds. It also includes Hispanics who say their race is Black," Pew said. Pew noted an increasing diversity among the Black population given the rising multiracial component. The coming of immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, meantime, has been "an important contributor to Black population growth."

The places with the largest Black populations as of 2023 were Texas, 4.33 million; Florida, 4 million; and Georgia, 3.7 million. The places with the highest concentrations of Black people were Washington, D.C., 45.8%; Mississippi, 37.6%; and Georgia, 33.4%.

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.

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Tim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL.com. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.

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