The presence of quasiparticles typically degrades the performance of superconducting microwave circuits. The readout signal can generate nonequilibrium quasiparticles, which lead to excess microwave loss and decoherence. To understand this effect quantitatively, we measure quasiparticle fluctuations and extract the quasiparticle density across different temperatures, readout powers, and resonator volumes. We find that microwave power generates a higher quasiparticle density as the active resonator volume is reduced and show that this effect sets a sensitivity limit on kinetic inductance detectors. We compare our results with theoretical models of direct microwave photon absorption by quasiparticles and conclude that an unknown, indirect mechanism plays a dominant role in quasiparticle generation. These results provide a route to mitigate quasiparticle generation due to readout power in superconducting devices.
