Virginia’s population growth is driven mostly by immigration

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New census data released last week confirms that Virginia has reversed a decade-long trend of more people moving out of the state than in.

For the first time since 2013, Virginia now has more people moving in than leaving the state.

If this sounds familiar, you’re right: The Census Bureau produces multiple census “products,” as they’re called. The American Community Survey previously said Virginia had reversed its out-migration; Gov. Glenn Youngkin celebrated that in an interview with Cardinal News that we published last month. As I pointed out then, Youngkin has talked more about Virginia’s migration numbers — first the bad ones, now the good ones — more than any other governor I’ve known (and I’ve met them all going back to Linwood Holton). To be fair, I haven’t heard any other governors talk about these numbers.

Last week the Census Bureau released its annual population estimates, which provides a welcome second data point (there’s nothing like having confirmation, especially when we’re talking about something that’s changing).

Those population estimates also shed light on a much bigger population trend: Yes, Virginia is now seeing more Americans move in than move out, but those are relatively modest numbers. The real driver of Virginia’s population growth is international. About three-quarters of Virginia’s population growth over the past year came from immigration. Let’s dig into these numbers.

Why Virginia’s domestic migration is now on the plus side

Virginia has always been gaining population, but for about a decade it was gaining population only because births outnumbered deaths — and international migration, aka immigration. Beneath the surface, Virginia was experiencing a population drain of people already here. That matters because, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, people “vote with their feet.” If more people are leaving than moving in, why? What’s wrong? That out-migration made Virginia look demographically more like a Northeastern state than a Southern one, which is generally considered not a compliment in the Old Dominion. Economically, it meant that Virginia was exporting people it had invested in educating, which is not a good thing.

In that previous column, demographer Hamilton Lombard of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service explained why we’re now seeing a reversal of these demographic trends.

1. Since the pandemic, fewer people are moving, so that has slowed outmigration.
   
2. When people have moved, they’ve often moved to rural areas, so now most of rural Virginia is seeing net in-migration for the first time in many years. Remote work has been a big part of that, because it’s helped increase migration to rural Virginia.
   
3. High housing prices have also slowed migration because some people simply can’t afford to move.
   

Here’s what the new data shows us:

For the year ending July 1, Virginia had 5,284 more people move into the state than move out. That’s a change from the year before when Virginia had 9,646 more people move out than move in.

Here’s how that has played out over the past four years and, just to help people visualize the size of these numbers, the locality in Virginia that comes closest to matching those population numbers.

Virginia’s net domestic migration is still puny compared to the states to our south, although the net in-migration numbers in North Carolina and Tennessee are slowing while Virginia’s are rising. Whether the scale of Virginia’s overall population changes is good or bad depends on your views of population growth, but here are the numbers either way:

Here’s some context in which to understand all these numbers:

Virginia and Washington were the only states to switch from exporting people to importing them

Virginia saw a swing from -9,646 to +5,284, a swing of 14,930 people.

Washington saw a swing from -17,293 to +2,671, a swing of 19,964.

Two states, North Dakota and Vermont, saw small gains turn into small minuses.

Americans continue to move South (and Southwest)

States in green gained population through domestic migration for the year ending July 1, 2024. States in pink saw more people move out than move in. Hover over each state for the numbers. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

As has been the case for some time now, people are generally moving from the Northeast to the Southeast. California has also been a people-exporter since the 1990s. A relatively new addition to the people-exporting states is Oregon, which saw net in-migration until 2022, when it flipped to net out-migration.

After the Civil War, New York newspaper publisher Horace Greeley advised: “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.” If Greeley were giving that advice now, it might be “Go South.” Because that's what people are doing. That's not new; we've seen southward migration since the end of World War II. The fastest-growing states are all in the South, although not every Southern state is seeing that growth. Louisiana and Mississippi continue to export people.

However, migration to the South is slowing

Virginia bucks a trend: Every other state in the South is seeing its in-migration slow down, while Virginia's is rising.

You may have seen news reports that say North Carolina has risen from the nation's third-biggest destination state to its second. That's true, but misleading. North Carolina may have risen in the rankings but only because migration into the Tar Heel state has slowed at a smaller rate than elsewhere. Texas and Florida, the top two destination states last year, have seen in-migration plummet. Florida saw just one-third the in-migration this past year than it did the year before. If we're going to politicize these numbers, then Youngkin is right to champion Virginia's rise, but somebody in Florida ought to ask Gov. Ron DeSantis why the Sunshine State has lost so much of its luster.

The top destination states in 2023 and how they fared in 2024:

The pandemic continues to reshape the country

We've seen this in Virginia, with the growth of remote work in rural areas and the overall in-migration into rural Virginia. Lombard points to two states where we see this happening nationally: New Hampshire and West Virginia.

In the year before the pandemic, New Hampshire saw net in-migration of 1,272. In the years since, its in-migration has surged as high as 10,011 and, even with a slow-down over the past year, is still 4,470.

West Virginia's change is even more dramatic. Before the pandemic, it was experiencing net out-migration. Every year since, it's seen net in-migration, and those figures have risen from 289 in 2022 to 3,296 in 2023 to 4,520 in 2024. Overall, West Virginia still lost population, because, with an aging population, deaths outnumbered births and everything else, so without this influx of new residents, it would have lost even more population.

Lombard points out that New Hampshire draws people from Boston while eastern West Virginia is seeing the same type of growth that parts of rural Virginia are out of Washington-Baltimore. “Higher interest rates may be discouraging long range moves but we are still seeing signs of hybrid and remote workers moving a couple hours from where their job is based to lower cost communities,” Lombard says.

Immigration is driving population growth

What we've dealt with so far has been domestic migration, but the real driver of population growth — both in Virginia and nationally — has been international migration. In other words, immigration.

Virginia may have picked up 5,284 people because more Americans have decided they'd like to be Virginians than former Virginians. However, over the past year, Virginia's population grew by 56,155 because of immigration.

For the census year ending July 1, 2020, immigration into Virginia was just 766. Here's how those numbers have changed — and an easy way to think about that growth:

So, yes, in the year ending July 1, Virginia had an immigrant population the size of Campbell County move into the state.

Here's another way to look at things:

In 2020, immigration accounted for 12.3% of Virginia's population growth. Last year, it accounted for 73.3% of Virginia's population growth.

Virginia's immigration-driven population growth is part of a national trend,: “With a net increase of 2.8 million people, [immigration] accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million increase in population between 2023 and 2024,” the Census Bureau said in a statement. “This reflects a continued trend of rising international migration, with a net increase of 1.7 million in 2022 and 2.3 million in 2023.”

As you can see in the map above, those immigrants are not equally distributed: Florida, California and Texas, in that order, are the three main destinations.

Now, before anyone freaks out about the growth of the immigrant population, consider this:

Immigration matters for economic reasons

The Census Bureau doesn't get into what type of immigration that may be, legal or otherwise. Now, obviously it would be better if all immigration were in an orderly and authorized way. However, these numbers also hint at something that's often overlooked in our immigration debates: the economic role of immigration. With the population aging, and birth rates falling, we are already seeing a worker shortage that's not going to abate. Realistically, the only way to fill those gaps in the workforce is through immigration.

Lombard offers this demographic appraisal: “Unauthorized migration has been highly unpopular in polling but when you look at Virginia and the country's birth rates over the past two decades, it is hard to see how the U.S. won't have considerably higher levels of immigration, whether it is authorized or unauthorized, than it has had in recent decades to prevent the workforce from shrinking. The number of Americans turning 18 will begin to decline after 2025, at least until the mid-2040s. Current birth rates in Virginia and the U.S. would need to rise by a third to stabilize the workforce. There are different projections of the number of immigrants that will be needed to prevent a decline in the workforce but it will likely need to gradually rise as the number of Americans turning 18 falls, reaching at least double the 2010s average during the 2030s. In the past, a handful of large cities, including DC, attracted most immigrants but the 2024 estimates show a wider range of communities are attracting immigrants. As the domestic labor supply begins to shrink, there will be a growing range of communities competing to attract immigrants as well as workers from other parts of the country.”

Here's another way to think of things: What's the economic challenge confronting Social Security and other such programs? It's because we have fewer workers paying into those programs at the same time that we have more retirees drawing out. If you want to make sure those programs deliver what they promised, we need more workers. Given low birth rates, that means we need more immigrants. The map above doesn't simply chart where immigants are growing, it may lay out a map of where future economic growth might be. Or, in the case of states losing population despite a growth in immigrants, the map may show where immigrants might be vital in holding up the economy. That brings us to this: overall population growth or decline.

All but three states are gaining population

Mississippi and West Virginia both lost population in the 2020 census, so their continued losses shouldn't be a surprise. As we saw earlier, West Virginia's population would have declined more if it hadn't been for so many people moving in; just not enough to offset deaths. Vermont is new in the population decline category. It has both net out-migration and deaths outnumbering births. If we equate population growth with success (because population loss is almost generally regarded as a lack of success), then it looks like virtually the whole country is being successful, demographically speaking. Here's what the map doesn't show but this next one does:

Immigration is keeping 18 states from losing population

Here's another way to visualize the economic importance of immigration. Without immigration, all the states in purple would have lost population (and the three in red would have lost more people than they did). While those states are clustered in the Northeast, or the Rust Belt generally, they span the country. They cover rural states and urban ones, Republican ones and Democratic ones. This isn't politics, this is just demography. While these figures don't distinguish between legal immigration or otherwise, this does underscore the economic importance of immigration, and the ramifications of any large-scale deportations that Donald Trump might carry out. We have good reason to be concerned about a porous border but we also have good reason to be concerned about the economic implications of immigration policy generally.

A local angle to that: Previous data has shown that Northern Virginia is losing population. Northern Virginia is also where Virginia's immigrant community is concentrated. That suggests that, without immigration, Virginia's largest metro area would be losing even more people.

What's next

These numbers released by the Census Bureau are only at the state level, not the locality level. We'll get a new round of county- and city-level population figures in January. These numbers tell us how the nation is changing; those numbers next month will tell us more about how Virginia is changing.

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