Kate Sheehy/KJZZ

People board a packed streetcar at the Tucson Convention Center stop.

New numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau show the country’s Hispanic population grew by more than a million people between July 1, 2014 and the same date a year later. That’s a more than 2 percent increase.

California has about 15.2 million Hispanics, and in California, the number of Hispanics actually exceeds the number of people who are non-Hispanic white alone," said Ben Bolander, chief of the Population Estimates Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau. "If you’re looking at overall growth in the Hispanic population, in terms of numbers, Texas is the leader. They added about a quarter of a million Hispanics to their population last year."

Bolander said Arizona’s Hispanic population, and its population overall, also grew during that year. As of July 1 last year, the state’s population was more than 6.8 million.

Thara Salamone, a senior demographer in the Arizona Department of Administration, said in addition to the state’s Hispanic population increasing, the state is also growing in another demographic.

"I think that we can say that we’re a very diverse population, and what we’ve been seeing all around the country I think is also happening here. We are becoming older," Salamone said.

Salamone said the state’s population of residents 55 and older has grown 27 percent since 2010. Overall, the Census Bureau found last year, 24 year olds had the biggest population of any single year of age.