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Federal officials claim Detroit is losing its residents, mayor say census is a "national clown show".

Courtesy census.gov

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is disputing new reporting from the U.S. Census Bureau. Federal officials claim the city continues to lose residents.

The Census Bureau estimates Detroit’s population was just over 620,000 as of last July. That’s down 8,000 from 2021 estimations. Duggan says the statistics have no basis in reality, and plans on contesting the figures.

“We don’t know what numbers they’re using. But we are going to know very shortly, and once we do we’ll show them where they’re wrong.” said Duggan.

Duggan says data from the U.S. Postal Service and local utility companies shows the federal government is under-counting the city. Detroit previously challenged the results of the 2020 census, which showed a nearly 11% population loss in the last decade. Afterwards, 1,500 people were added to the counts.

Eli Newman is assistant news director and editor. He works with the WKAR news and digital content teams to facilitate the creation of meaningful and thought-provoking multimedia news content for WKAR Public Media.