The District’s population increased by nearly 3 percent over the last year, the largest such increase in the nation, new Census data show. The city this century has enjoyed its first population uptick since the 1950s, and last year welcomed more than 16,000 new residents alone, an increase of 2.7 percent.

The city’s population in 2010 was just over 600,000 residents. The Census data compares population in April 2010 with the population count in July 2011, which was 617,996.