What is in this file
One row per state, plus DC and Puerto Rico where available. The rank universe is 50 states; reference rows have an empty rank. The file is sorted by descending value with reference jurisdictions after the states.
- Period
- July 1, 2025
- Release
- 2026-01-27
- Updated
- 2026-10-23
- Producer
- U.S. Census Bureau
- Source
- Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025 / Gazetteer 2026 · NST-EST2025-ALLDATA / Gazetteer ALAND
- Units
- People per square mile of land
- Cadence
- Annual
Quick validation snapshot
New Jersey has the highest estimate (1,298.2 per sq mi); Alaska has the lowest (1.3 per sq mi). The U.S. benchmark is 96.7 per sq mi. These are useful checks when importing the CSV into a spreadsheet. Reference jurisdictions may lie outside the 50-state range, so exclude rows marked reference when reproducing the default state ranks.
The Census Bureau does not publish margins of error for population estimates, and land area has none.
Calculation and reproducibility
July 1, 2025 resident population (Vintage 2025) / land area in square miles (2026 Gazetteer). The U.S. value uses the 50 states and DC.
Immutable edition 2026-10-23 CSV · Full edition registry, including available histories
Column definitions
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| rank | 1 + the number of states with a higher source value; empty for reference rows. |
| jurisdiction | State name or labeled reference jurisdiction. |
| value | Numeric estimate, using the source’s available precision. |
| unit | People per square mile of land |
| moe_90 | Published 90% margin of error in the same units; empty when not published. |
| reference | True if excluded from the default 50-state ranking. |
| period | Reference period of the observation. |
| release | Date of the source release. |
| source | Producer and table/file identifier. |
| source_url | Producer file or source documentation; microdata rows link to the specific state input ZIP. |
Limits and reuse
A statewide average. Most residents of large, sparsely populated states live in a few dense areas; density says nothing about how crowded a particular place is.
This is an independent arrangement of federal statistical data. Cite the named producer for the original observations and Rank the States for computed ranks. Downloading or embedding does not imply government endorsement. Source files are archived with a checksum for reproducibility.
SHA-256 of the concatenated population and Gazetteer input SHA-256 strings. SHA-256: abaa84ec3a21edcb2992ccf38ad01235e8767b9d2dd3811c0dff17b95fa16c29
Citation
Rank the States. Population density, July 1, 2025. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025 / Gazetteer 2026, NST-EST2025-ALLDATA / Gazetteer ALAND; released 2026-01-27. Edition 2026-10-23. https://rankthestates.com/data/editions/2026-10-23/population-density.csv