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 · NST-EST2025-ALLDATA
- Units
- People
- Cadence
- Annual
Quick validation snapshot
California has the highest estimate (39,355,309); Wyoming has the lowest (588,753). The U.S. benchmark is 341,784,857. 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.
Population changes use July 1 estimates from the same Vintage 2025 file. Do not substitute an older vintage for one end of the calculation.
Calculation and reproducibility
Published estimate; no transformation of the value.
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 |
| 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
Population estimates incorporate births, deaths, and migration; they are not a new census count. Each vintage revises the entire series.
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: 92188e29cb0a67dcf95afa7d6c47359409782f086478b70ea4128eb70e223ca9
Citation
Rank the States. Population, July 1, 2025. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2025, NST-EST2025-ALLDATA; released 2026-01-27. Edition 2026-10-23. https://rankthestates.com/data/editions/2026-10-23/population.csv