Seattle grew more racially diverse in 2022, census data shows

SEATTLE – A significant increase in Seattle’s Asian population helped the city grow more racially diverse in 2022, according to census data released last week.

While Seattle remained a majority-white city, the white non-Hispanic population dipped below 60% for the first time.

The data, which comes from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey, shows Seattle’s Asian population hit an estimated 135,300 people last year, an increase of around 13,000 from 2021. Asian people accounted for 18.1% of the city’s total population last year, which was nearly 750,000.

An earlier release of census data showed immigration to King County rebounded in 2022 from the pandemic. Immigration has been the primary driver of growth for the county’s Asian population.

Another earlier release of census data showed a decline in the county’s white population in 2022. In Seattle, though, the white population was effectively unchanged from 2021, estimated at about 444,900. Even so, that number has dipped from a high of 473,200 in 2019. White people made up 59.4% of Seattle’s population in 2022, down from 60.1% the year before.

Throughout the previous decade, Seattle had the fifth-highest percentage of white residents among the 50 largest cities in the nation. But Seattle has diversified at a faster rate than some other large cities, and as of 2022, Seattle ranked seventh for the share of the population that is white. Portland had the highest percentage of white residents, at 65.8%, and was nearly tied with Colorado Springs, Colorado, at 65.4%.

Among the nation’s 50 biggest cities, half did not have a single racial or ethnic majority group. Seattle was in the other half that did have a majority group, and was among the 17 major cities with a white majority. Five cities had a Hispanic majority, and three had a Black majority.

No major city had an Asian majority, but San Jose, California, came closest, with Asian people making up nearly 40% of the city’s population. Seattle ranked fourth among the 50 largest cities for the share of the population that is Asian.

In Seattle, Hispanic people made up the third-largest racial/ethnic group, with a population of about 63,000, or 8.4% of the city’s total. The U.S. Census Bureau classifies Hispanic as an ethnicity, not a race, and people who identify as Hispanic also select a racial group on the census form. Many Hispanic people select the “some other race” category.

People who identify as two or more races numbered 52,800, or about 7% of the population. That’s a decline from 2021, when 63,200 in Seattle identified as multiracial.

Seattle’s Black population was estimated at around 43,700 in 2022, or 5.8% of the total. The city’s Black population has plateaued at under 50,000 for more than a decade, even as the overall population has ballooned.

There were fewer than 3,000 Native American/Alaska Native people and Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian people living in Seattle in 2022.

In Bellevue, which has racially diversified more quickly than Seattle has in recent years, the Asian population was estimated at 63,500, or 41.6%, and the white population was around 60,000, or 39.3%. Bellevue’s total population was around 153,000 last year.

Eight King County cities are included in the census data. Like Bellevue, most of them were highly diverse, without a single racial or ethnicity majority group. These include Renton, Federal Way, Auburn and Kent. Seattle and Kirkland both had a white majority. In Kirkland, white people made up 62.8% of the population.