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For the second year in a row, more people have moved into Virginia than out of Virginia.
That’s a continued reversal of a decade-long trend that saw just the opposite: More people moving out than moving in.
The latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, released Tuesday, show that Virginia’s net growth through domestic migration more than doubled from 2024 to 2025 — a growth rate of 2.5 times, to be precise.
Despite the increased in-migration, Virginia’s population growth overall slowed — almost entirely because of a big drop in international migration, i.e., immigration.
On the flip side, even with lower immigration, immigration remains the main driver of Virginia’s population growth — accounting for about two-thirds of the state’s population growth. That’s because birth rates continue to fall.
What we see here are multiple demographic trends, some of them moving in different directions, but all of them having policy implications for the state.
Here’s an overview of the new census numbers and what they mean:
Population growth, both nationally and in Virginia, has fallen sharply primarily because immigration has fallen
From July 2023 to June 2024, the United States’ population grew by 3,248,745 people. From July 2024 to June 2025, that population growth dropped to 1,781,060.
What put the brakes on America’s population growth? A sudden drop in immigration, from 2,734,468 to 1,262,202. The presumption is this is due to President Donald Trump’s immigration (or should we say, anti-immigration) policies. And before you ask, the Census Bureau only counts people and doesn’t take note of their legal status — although those who study immigration often put the percentage of immigrants who are here without legal authorization at about 25% to 29%.
We see the same phenomenon in Virginia.
Virginia’s population grew by 87,608 from 2023-24, then dropped to 60,465 from 2024-25.
The reason is the same as nationally: Immigration fell, from 69,854 to 40,436.
Some context is in order here: Immigration grew after the pandemic, which also coincided with the Joe Biden administration, which had more liberal immigration policies (both legal and otherwise) than the Trump administration.
Even the lowered immigration rates are still relatively high, and rank as the fourth highest figures over the past 15 years.
However, what we don’t know is how much immigration has fallen since July 1, 2025, as Trump’s policies have taken hold.
Births have also fallen
Lower immigration is the main reason why Virginia’s population growth has slowed, but not the only reason. Births in Virginia are down and deaths are up — a function of both an aging population and a declining birth rate.
Nationally, births were up 0.3%. In Virginia, they were down by -1.8%. This is the third straight year that births in Virginia have fallen.
Immigration accounts for two-thirds of Virginia’s population growth
Overall, Virginia gained 40,436 people through immigration, 13,817 through births outnumbering deaths and 6,268 through more people moving in than moving out. On a percentage basis, that’s immigration 66.8%, births over deaths 22.8%, domestic migration 10.3%.
Even with lowered immigration rates, immigration is still what’s driving Virginia’s population growth. This matches what we saw in the Old Dominion University report that I wrote about Monday.
The domestic migration, while the smallest figure, is significant for three reasons: a) the positive numbers represent a turnaround from previous trends, b) this is the only one of the three categories that’s growing, and c) it suggests that other Americans are seeing Virginia as a desirable place to live.
The increase in domestic migration appears due to more people moving into rural areas
We won’t be able to say this for certain until next month when the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia releases its annual population estimates for each city and county in the state. However, in recent years the dominant trend has been more people moving into rural areas. Some might still be losing population because, with an aging population, deaths outnumber everything else but the in-migration trends have been significant — and the expectation is we’ll see those continue. “The input data for our county and city estimates points towards much of this being driven by Virginia’s smaller metro areas and rural counties attracting an increasing number of new residents,” demographer Hamilton Lombard said by email Tuesday. “When you look at the state estimates . . . you see some signs of this being part of a larger trend, migration into West Virginia from other states last year reached its highest level in decades, migration to Kentucky and North Carolina also rose while migration to Tennessee was still well above pre-pandemic levels.”
Nationally, Sun Belt states continue to be the big gainers, but we see some changes
North Carolina gained more people through domestic migration in this one-year reporting period than any other state — the Tar Heel State had net in-migration of 84,064,even more than Texas at 67,299.
Between them, the Carolinas are the hot spot for moves — South Carolina had the third highest net in-migration at 66,622.
Interestingly, the Carolinas’ in-migration didn’t really change. What changed is that other Southern states saw their in-migration fall — and fall hard.
Texas has seen its net in-migration fall dramatically, from 218,840 in 2022 to 67,299 last year. Florida has also seen net in-migration plummet, from 310,892 in 2022 to 22,517 last year. If we were Armadillo News or Alligator News, we’d be diving deep into those trends but since we’re Cardinal News, we’ll stick to our own. Still, we must ask: Why have those states seen in-migration slow down so much?
The biggest loser continues to be California: Its net out-migration has slowed, but remains the biggest in the country.
None of the regional trends are absolute, though: While the Sun Belt generally gained, Louisiana and Mississippi saw out-migration. While the Northeast generally saw more people move out than move in, New Hampshire and Maine saw a net growth from newcomers.
One of the biggest turnarounds was Michigan, which has seen so much out-migration that the state launched an advertising campaign encouraging people to either stay or move there. That seems to have worked. It posted an small net in-migration of 1,796.
Virginia’s net in-migration can be read several ways
On the plus side: It’s on the positive side, and is up.
On the other hand, it’s pretty anemic compared to some other states. We’re nowhere close to our southern neighbors, North Carolina and Tennessee, whose net in-migration is 13.4 times and 6.8 times what ours is. Two Rust Belt states in the Midwest, Indiana and Ohio, had almost twice the net in-migration we did. Even West Virginia had more net in-migration than Virginia.
This shows why we shouldn’t trust the U-Haul data
Earlier this month, U-Haul released its annual data on its customers, which showed more people moved out of Virginia than into the state. That news release drew lots of attention, and Gov. Abigail Spanberger cited the data in her address to the General Assembly. However, U-Haul customers are not necessarily representative of the population at large, which makes the Census Bureau data more reliable.
There is one asterisk we should remember, though: The U-Haul data covered a calendar year, the Census Bureau covered a year ending last summer, so it’s possible there were countervailing trends in the second half of the year. Still, we should likely trust the Census Bureau over U-Haul.
The overall population trends have political implications for the 2030s
These are not new but they are continuing. The states gaining the most population (Texas and Florida) vote Republican in federal elections. The states losing population or with the slowest growth tend to vote Democratic, most notably California and Illinois.
This will matter come the 2030 census, which set in motion a new round of congressional redistricting. Given these trends, Republican-voting state will gain seats and Electoral College votes, and Democrats will lose numbers. The catch will be if any of those fast-growing states switch their political allegiance. Democrats have long set their sights on flipping Texas. However, the slowdown in people moving to Texas calls that project into question. We don’t know the political leanings of the people moving to Texas, but if more people were moving, we might have more questions about the political future of the Lone Star state.
What all this means
Interpretations will surely vary. Virginia’s uptick in net migration is a good thing for business leaders worried about the labor pool. Immigration’s dominant role in Virginia’s population growth means the state is at the mercy of federal immigration policy. Virginia’s improving, but still weak, domestic migration will continue to be political fodder for both parties, for Republicans who say the state’s taxes are too high, and for Democrats who say its services are inadequate. We’ll get a clearer picture of the distribution of this population growth next month.
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