Suffolk County saw one of the steepest population declines in the country last year, losing 3.3 percent of its population in just 15 months after tens of thousands of people moved out of Boston and its surrounding communities, new Census data show.

Overall, the United States experienced its lowest annual rate of population increase in history between July 2020 and July 2021 and, at 393,000 people, its smallest population gain in more than a century, said Kenneth Johnson, a demographer and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire.

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