Minority populations are booming across Texas and Austin, according to new Census numbers released Thursday. Austin City Demographer Ryan Robinson says Austin’s population grew just over twenty percent during the past ten years, giving us a total of 790,390 people. That's a faster rate of growth than the city was expecting.
“When you look at this 20-percent growth, which in the City of Austin’s case is almost 140,000 new Austinites, 70 percent of that growth came from growth within the Hispanic community and growth within the Asian community. So that’s pretty phenomenal, that fully 70 percent of the city’s gain came from non white households," said Robinson.
He said the city expected to see a high share of Hispanics but the growth in the Asian population came as a bit of a surprise to some. About 35 percent of Austin's total population is Hispanic. Asians now make up over six percent.
"I think that's one reason Austin's got such a vibrant culture is because of this diversity. I mean I use that term and I don't use it loosely because I really do think that diversity is a huge positive for cities," Robinson told KUT.
The new Census numbers also confirmed that Travis County is past the one million mark in population.
