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Fairfax County is losing population at a faster rate than some counties in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
People are moving out of parts of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads at rates not seen in our lifetimes — or sometimes ever.
Meanwhile, virtually every part of rural Virginia — with two clusters of exceptions — has seen an influx of newcomers over the past three years as pandemic-induced population trends reshape the state in sometimes unprecedented ways.
Those are three big takeaways from the annual population estimates released over the weekend by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. If some of them sound familiar to you, it’s likely because you’ve paid attention to our previous coverage of the state’s demographic trends that have shown all these trends coming at us, like a wave rolling toward the shore. What’s new is that these are new numbers — estimates of each locality’s population as of July 1, 2023 — and they paint a picture of the state’s population trends in even brighter colors than what we’ve had before.
I’ll mine several columns out of this data, but for now, here are some of the highlights:
Virginia’s population growth has slowed to almost nothing
From 2022 to 2023, the state’s population grew by less than half a percentage point, from 8,696,955 to 8,729,032. “For Virginia, this is the slowest it has grown since the Civil War,” says demographer Hamilton Lombard at the Weldon Cooper Center. Since the 2020 census, the state’s population is up 1%. At that rate, Virginia is on track for its slowest decade of population growth rate since the 1870 census put us at 0.5% — a figure that was skewed by the wartime loss of West Virginia. Since then, Virginia’s slowest-growing decade was the 1920s, when the population grew 4.9%.
So why is Virginia growing so slowly? Which set of politicians can we blame? Demographers don’t really look at the world that way. Instead, they look at trends that often defy political solutions. Among them:
Birth rates continue to decline
This isn’t just a Virginia trend, it’s a trend across much of the world. In statistical terms, births have to be measured against deaths — what demographics call either “natural increase” (more births than deaths) or “natural decrease” (more deaths than births). Virginia still has more births than deaths, just a lot fewer than it used to. In 2019, the state saw about 27,000 more births than deaths. In 2022, there were fewer than 13,000 more births than deaths. These are trends with long-term implications — for K-12 school enrollment, for college enrollment, for eventual labor pools. The worker shortage begins at home, with declining birth rates.
I’ll examine some of the specific numbers in a future column, but you can look at them now on your own on the Weldon Cooper Center website.
Keep in mind that births and deaths aren’t the only way populations change. The other driver of population is people moving either in or or out, and for many localities, that’s been a bigger factor in their population gains or losses than the birth rate.
The pandemic years have seen people move out of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and into much of rural Virginia
That’s the simple version. The longer version is as complicated as each person’s individual story. We’ll aim for something in the middle. The two localities losing the most population since 2000 are Fairfax County (-10,911) and Virginia Beach (-5,865). Some rural counties in Southwest and Southside may be losing population at faster rates (Buchanan County has the steepest population loss on a percentage basis, at -5.7%) but the actual numbers are much smaller. The population declines that are doing the most to reshape the state are out of Fairfax County and many of the cities in Hampton Roads — and those population declines are driven by people moving out, not a declining birth rate.
In Fairfax County, births have outnumbered deaths over the past three years by 22,642. But 33,553 more people have moved out than moved in — which wipes out Fairfax’s birth rate and means the county has lost 10,911 people since the last census. Likewise, Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach have all seen more births than deaths — but the moving van has left those cities losing population.
These are population trends of historic proportions. Since Virginia Beach absorbed Princess Anne County in the early 1960s, the city has never seen its population decrease in a census. Maybe the city will turn things around and won’t post a decrease in the next headcount, but it’s headed that way now. Fairfax County hasn’t seen a population loss since the 1830 census, but it’s losing now. Here’s some more context: Over the past three years, Fairfax County has lost population at a faster rate (-0.9%) than some counties in Southwest and Southside, which historicially have seen the biggest declines. Some comparisons: Nottoway County lost population at a rate of -0.1%, Mecklenburg County at -0.3%, Washington County at -0.6%. Looking deeper into the numbers, Fairfax’s out-migration rate has been higher than most counties in Southwest and Southside; the only real difference between Fairfax County and those rural counties in these latest numbers is that Fairfax County has more births than deaths; those rural counties don’t.
These figures for Fairfax County should be the brightest of red flags: Northern Virginia is the state’s economic engine. This is where our single biggest chunk of tax revenue is produced. If the biggest locality in Northern Virginia (not to mention the state) is losing population, that has fiscal implications throughout the state.
Other localities in Northern Virginia are still seeing their populations increase — but that’s because of births still outnumbering deaths and everything else. Beneath the surface, Arlington, Alexandria, Manassas and Prince William County all saw more people moving out than moving in. (So did Fairfax city, which, like Fairfax County but unlike these other localities, lost population overall). Lombard calls our attention to an even more telling figure: Loudoun County not long ago was the state’s fastest-growing locality, “attracting close to 10,000 more residents than left each year.” Last year, Loudoun County saw only 11 more people move in than move out.
I know Gov. Glenn Youngkin pays attention to metrics like this; others should, too. Demographically speaking, our world has turned upside down. I’ll get to the “why” shortly but before that we have one more big trend to take notice of.
Most of rural Virginia is now seeing more people move in than move out
Most of Southwest and Southside is still losing population but that’s simply because these localities have aging populations and deaths outnumber births — and everything else. There’s not much that can be done about that. However, the trend that matters most is beneath the surface — a surge of people moving in.
There are still two regions of the state where more people are moving out than moving in — the Wise County, Dickenson County, Buchanan County, Russell County, Tazewell County part of Southwest and the region from Patrick County to Halifax County (with Danville and Martinsville as exceptions).
Some notable numbers
Bedford County is now estimated to be bigger than Lynchburg — with Bedford at 80,759 and Lynchburg at 80,736.
Roanoke, after gaining population in the previous decade, is losing population again. Its population, which hit 100,011 in the last census, is now put at 99,045. About 70% of that decline is because deaths are outnumbering births, although there is some net out-migration.
Suffolk has now passed the 100,000 mark, almost double the city’s population in 1990.
Death rates in aging rural counties often mask the population changes taking place. Lombard cites this example: “Middlesex, a small rural county located on the Rappahannock River and Chesapeake Bay, has, in recent years, attracted new residents at a similar rate as Frederick County — one of Virginia’s fastest growing counties — yet Middlesex’s population has only grown by 1 percent since 2020 because it had 400 more deaths than births during the period.”
Almost everywhere else, more moving vans are coming in than going out. This is something we haven’t seen since a back-to-the-land movement in the 1970s. “Virginia is experiencing a remarkable break from some of its longstanding demographic trends,” Lombard says. “In 2023, over three-quarters of Virginia’s rural counties outside metro areas had more people move into them than out, the highest share since 1975.”
In some localities, this net in-migration has been taking place for some years now. In others, it’s quite new. In last year’s estimates, for instance, Accomack County, Alleghany County, Lee County, Northampton County, Page County, Smyth County and Surry County were all registering net out-migration; now they’re registering net in-migration. Something has switched in the past year. Richmond isn’t rural, but it’s also seen net out-migration turn to net in-migration; more on Richmond to come.
This influx of new residents also has implications. “Since 2020, more people moving into Virginia’s rural localities has resulted in the fastest increases in home values in the state,” Lombard points out. “Earlier this month, the Weldon Cooper Center released school enrollment projections, which forecast that the ten fastest growing school divisions over the next five years will be mostly in rural counties. As death rates continue to fall during the 2020s, the surge in migration to Virginia’s rural counties should only become more obvious.”
Richmond is the new Northern Virginia
The biggest population gains — both in raw numbers and percentages — are in and around the Richmond metro. The biggest growth rate in the state is in New Kent County, east of Richmond, at 11.9% over the past four years, followed by Goochland County at 7.7% and Louisa County at 7.5%. In terms of actual numbers, the biggest population increase is in Chesterfield County, which has added 23,155 people since 2000. About 85% of that has come through people moving in, not births. That’s the equivalent of adding the city of Waynesboro to Chesterfield in just four years. We used to see these kinds of population increases in and around Northern Virginia; now they’ve shifted to the center of the state.
Here’s how profound this growth in the greater Richmond area has been, Lombard says: “Decades of migration into the Richmond Metro Area and weak growth in western Virginia has meant that at some point early this year, the size of the population in the Richmond Metro Area will have surpassed Virginia’s total population living west of the Blue Ridge Mountains for the first time since before the American Revolution.”
Remember that the next time we have redistricting and we see even more legislative seats depart the western part of the state. Now, for the big question, why is this happening?
The pandemic has accelerated migration trends
We were seeing some of these trends before the pandemic, but the outbreak of COVID-19 has sent them into overdrive. What we’re seeing here is a Zoom-era migration. Last week, I wrote about how most localities have seen a sharp increase in the number of remote workers; here’s another measure. Rural areas and small metros have been the demographic beneficiaries. “So far this decade, among metro areas in Virginia, Northern Virginia has had the highest per capita out-migration rate, while the Bristol Metro Area has had the highest per capita in-migration rate,” Lombard said.
The politics of population
You’ll notice that all the drivers I’ve cited so far are demographic ones, not political ones – birth rates, migration. But ultimately politics do come into play. They’ll come into play in the state budget, if Northern Virginia starts producing less tax revenue, which means less money to get redistributed to rural counties whose schools are subsidized by the state. Just last week, we saw state Sen. David Marsden, D-Fairfax County, pushing a casino for Fairfax County; we used to think that only economically distressed localities needed casinos. Now we see Danville experiencing net in-migration but Fairfax is seeing net out-migration — and overall population declines. Those rising school enrollments will be welcome in many rural areas — until somebody has to come up with money to build a new school.
I also feel certain that the governor will seize on these numbers to make his case for why the state needs to reduce its income tax — because not everyone leaving Northern Virginia is moving to rural Virginia, some are moving out of state. (He’s probably already stopped reading this column and instructed one of his press aides to draft a statement.) Nationally, we’ve seen a general migration from northern and Midwestern states to southern ones. Or, as some prefer to see it, from blue states to red states — or from high-tax states to low-tax ones. That’s certainly true, although what we don’t know is how much taxes really play a role in those migrations. Are people moving to the Southeast because taxes are lower or because it’s warmer? Some have pointed out that, yes, people are moving to red states, but they’re moving to blue cities in red states. This is not the place today to delve into the nuances of that but, big-picture, these latest estimates do give the governor fodder to make his case. Of course, they may also give others fodder that something else should be done. With the General Assembly in session, they can hash all that out.
For now, what we know is this: We’re seeing an exodus out of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, while the central part of the state booms, and much of rural Virginia is much like Shrodinger’s cat — losing population overall even as it sees more people moving in.