Colorado lost 12,100 residents to other states in the twelve months ending July 1, 2025. In that same twelve months, El Paso County added 4,684 people and the city of Colorado Springs added 2,288. So no, Colorado Springs is not losing people. It is still growing, slowly, on a different engine than it ran on five years ago.
I'm Brandon Behr, a REALTOR® with the Behr & Behr Team in Colorado Springs, and I field this question in nearly every buyer consultation. One person read that Colorado is emptying out. The next read that the Springs posted the largest one-year gain of any city in the state. Both headlines came out of the same Census release.
The two numbers that make this look like a contradiction
The Census Bureau's estimates for July 1, 2025, covered by the Colorado Sun on January 29, 2026, put Colorado at 6,012,561 people, up 0.4%. Net domestic migration was negative 12,100. Net international migration came to 15,356, down from 58,308 a year earlier. Colorado Public Radio reported on January 27, 2026 that this was the state's slowest growth since 1989. State Demographer Kate Watkins told CPR: "We have definitely slowed in the growth categories."
The county ran the other way. The Colorado Department of Local Affairs State Demography Office summarized the county release on March 26, 2026: El Paso County added 4,684 residents, a 0.6% gain and the fourth largest increase of any Colorado county. Census QuickFacts puts the county at 757,040 on July 1, 2025, against an April 1, 2020 base of 731,786. Axios Colorado Springs reported on June 12, 2026 that the city stood at 494,743, up 2,288 or 0.5%, the largest one-year gain of any municipality in the state. More than half of Colorado's 272 municipalities lost population.
Where the growth is actually coming from
USAFacts, presenting Census Population Estimates Program data for El Paso County with a July 7, 2026 update, gives this for the year ending July 1, 2025.
Component of change | El Paso County, July 2024 to July 2025 |
|---|---|
Natural increase (births minus deaths) | about +3,400 |
Net international migration | about +1,000 |
Net domestic migration (from other states) | about +164 |
Total change, per the State Demography Office | +4,684 |
The components are rounded in the source and do not sum exactly to 4,684. Treat them as shape, not precision. Roughly three quarters of last year's growth was babies, not transplants. Net domestic migration, the number everybody argues about, came in near 164 people across a county of 757,000. That is statistical noise, and a real change from the 2010s, when domestic migration did most of the work. If you are budgeting on a wave of out-of-state buyers bidding your house up in three years, the data will not back you.
The jobs number is what actually moved
Population held up. Employment did not. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics Economy at a Glance page for the Colorado Springs metro, extracted July 2, 2026, total nonfarm employment was 330,200 in May 2026 against 331,000 in May 2025. Over those twelve months BLS shows education and health services up 2,700 jobs (+5.3%) and professional and business services up 500 (+0.9%), against government down 1,600 (-2.8%), other services down 1,100 (-4.8%) and information down 600 (-11.8%). Government posting the largest decline matters in a town where federal payroll is a load-bearing wall.
Unemployment stayed low anyway. The BLS Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment release of July 29, 2026 puts the metro at 4.1% in June 2026 on a labor force of 385,511. Bill Craighead, program director of the UCCS Economic Forum, told SoCo Digest on March 5, 2026 that the region added close to 800 jobs a month in 2022 and 2023 and roughly 100 a month across 2024 and 2025, with the falloff traced mainly to housing construction after mortgage rates jumped.
The military floor nobody counts correctly
Many local moves are ordered rather than chosen. The Army's Fort Carson fact sheet, current as of February 2025, lists 23,716 active duty soldiers, 57,220 family members and 5,412 civilian employees, a total of 89,630, with an annual economic impact of $2.55 billion. The City of Fountain's military snapshot, dated December 2024, puts Peterson and Schriever Space Force Bases together at 6,373 active duty, 11,069 family members and 27,486 total supported.
I could not find a current official personnel count for the Air Force Academy or Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station that I would stand behind, so I am not publishing one. If a blog quotes you a precise Academy figure, ask where it came from.
Timing matters more than totals. U.S. Transportation Command described peak permanent change of station season as roughly mid-May through mid-September in a July 18, 2022 release. That compresses the market into Memorial Day through Labor Day, which is why a listing untouched in October draws three showings in a week the following June.
Where the sources disagree, and why
On price reductions I found two figures that look contradictory and are not. Colorado Springs Real Estate News, publishing June 2026 MLS data on July 10, 2026, put 43.4% of listings as having cut price during that month, average reduction 2.38%. HousingWire, on November 6, 2025, put 53.7% of active listings as having cut, using its own data feed for the week ending November 1, 2025. Different windows, different denominators, different seasons. Both describe a market where four to five listings in ten get repriced before they sell.
The BLS disagrees with itself, too. The Colorado Springs Area Economic Summary, updated July 1, 2026, reports nonfarm employment down 1,300 jobs (-0.4%) over the twelve months ending May 2026, while the Economy at a Glance table for the same metro and months implies a decline closer to 800. The direction is identical, and the direction is what I would act on.
The largest disagreement is the one in the headline. A region can add residents while shedding jobs if the additions are newborns and the losses sit in sectors that staffed up against a construction boom now over.
What a buyer should do differently
Stop pricing in a migration wave, in either direction. Your negotiating room comes from inventory and time on market, not a population story. Per Pikes Peak REALTOR Services Corp for June 2026, single family and patio homes in El Paso County ran 3.3 months of supply, 42 average days on market and a median of $499,999. Condos and townhomes ran 5.1 months, 51 days and a median of $325,000. Two markets, one county line. Ask for the rate buydown before the price cut: on a $500,000 purchase, a seller-paid buydown usually moves the monthly payment further than the roughly $12,000 average reduction reported for June 2026. Get it run both ways before you write. And watch your own sector. If your paycheck is federal or defense adjacent, government employment here is down 2.8% over the year, and that belongs in your affordability math. I take up the timing question in whether this is a good time to buy here.
How to check all of this yourself
- Census Bureau QuickFacts at census.gov/quickfacts. Enter "Colorado Springs city, Colorado" or "El Paso County, Colorado" for the current estimate and the 2020 base.
- Census Bureau Population Estimates Program. Vintage 2025 county estimates came out in March 2026, city and town estimates on May 14, 2026. Each vintage revises prior years, so a number you saved last year may not match.
- Colorado State Demography Office at demography.dola.colorado.gov. Its County Components of Change lookup runs 1970 to 2060, with births, deaths and net migration by county.
- BLS Economy at a Glance at bls.gov/eag, Colorado Springs MSA. Monthly employment by industry, prior year alongside.
- Installation fact sheets. Fort Carson publishes a stat card on home.army.mil/carson with an "as of" date on it.
One limitation: the Population Estimates Program is a model, not a headcount. It carries records forward from the last decennial census and gets revised, sometimes materially.
What I would do with this
Stop treating "is everybody leaving" as a housing question. The county grows on births while domestic migration sits near zero and payroll employment slips. That produces a market balanced on paper, slow on the ground, unforgiving of an ambitious list price.
If you are selling, price to the first fourteen days. Where net domestic migration is about 164 people, no incoming crowd discovers your house in week six. Your buyer already lives here, is being ordered here, or is retiring here.
Weighing this market against the metro to the north? I put the two side by side in Colorado Springs versus Denver. The honest guide to moving here covers ground this piece does not, and I would read what your property tax bill really says before setting a budget.
Brandon Behr is a licensed REALTOR® with the Behr & Behr Team in Colorado Springs. He works across El Paso County, from Fountain and Security-Widefield up through Falcon, Black Forest and Monument, and would rather show you the source table than the summary. To have the current Pikes Peak REALTOR Services Corp numbers run against a specific neighborhood or price band, reach out to our team.
This is general market information, not financial, tax or legal advice. I am not an economist or a demographer. Population estimates are modeled figures the Census Bureau revises annually, and market statistics change monthly, so verify with the sources named above before relying on them. Behr & Behr Team is committed to Equal Housing Opportunity. All information is deemed reliable but should be independently verified.
