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In an era when the labor pool is declining and talent is considered the key to economic success, Pulaski County seems to be winning.
From 2020 to 2024, Pulaski saw a net gain of 465 people in the 25-44 age cohort. In percentage terms, the 6.1% growth it saw in that age group was the highest of any locality west of the New River. In actual numbers, Pulaski’s ability to attract that age group was even more impressive. It added more people in the 25-44 prime working age range than Montgomery County (a county three times its size) and more than the city of Roanoke, both of which saw their numbers decrease.
That’s not the most surprising thing, though. Pulaski saw its 25-44 population grow faster than most localities in Northern Virginia. While Pulaski was gaining 465 people in that age group, Loudoun County was only gaining 58. Arlington, Alexandria and Prince William County saw their populations in that age range shrink.
Pulaski drew so many people in the youngest adult-age cohort that something else remarkable happened: While the state and nation are growing older, Pulaski is growing younger. Over the past four years, Pulaski’s median age fell from 47.0 to 46.7. Statistically speaking, the county is still very much on the older side, but it can no longer be said that Pulaski is a community that is exporting young adults. On the contrary, it’s importing them — and at a rate faster than most of the localities in Northern Virginia. Or Hampton Roads, for that matter.
Despite all that, Pulaski County’s population still fell from 2020 to 2024.
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A new tranche of data from the U.S. Census Bureau — these numbers dealing with age — has come out, and that data helps us better understand the population trends that are reshaping Virginia, particularly its rural communities.
Let’s start with what we knew previously: Virginia’s population is growing, but it’s growing more slowly than before, a combination of reduced immigration and declining birthrates. That growth is also concentrated in certain parts of the state, primarily a swath from the Shenandoah Valley down to Hampton Roads, with only a few exceptions outside that. Most of rural Virginia is losing population.
Think of that as the surface trend. Just as a lake might look placid, beneath the water there may be currents flowing we can’t see from the shore. Beneath the surface of those population numbers, there are lots of conflicting trends. Most of rural Virginia is now seeing more people move in than move out, a significant reversal from previous decades. However, many of those rural communities are still losing population because they’re so much older, and deaths outnumber both births and the net in-migration of newcomers. As I’ve put it before, there are far more hearses than there are moving vans.
The new age data tells us more about just who is moving in and moving out, and where. The biggest change is that the age 25-44 population in Northern Virginia is mostly flat, or shrinking. Meanwhile, that age group is growing in all but a few parts of rural Virginia. Pulaski County stands out in Southwest Virginia for its unusually high success rate, if you’d like to call it that, but Pulaski is not alone statewide. Bedford County, which sits next to three population centers (Lynchburg, Smith Mountain Lake and Roanoke) has added 1,343 people in the 25-44 age group, more than any other locality west of the urban crescent. In Southside, Mecklenburg County has added 500 in that cohort, with at least some of that attributable to the growth of the Microsoft data center complex there.
Here’s how Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, describes these numbers. “Mirroring national trends, young adults have increasingly moved to or remained in Virginia’s smaller metro areas and rural counties and left or not moved to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads,” he said via email. “In Virginia, this trend doesn’t appear to be the result of a one-off spike during the pandemic, the number of people who moved to the parts of Virginia outside its three largest metro areas in 2024 was higher than in 2022, which was twice the number seen in 2019.”
So why are we seeing this new trend in which young adults don’t automatically move to our biggest metros? Lombard cites two things: high housing costs, which discourage people from moving to higher-priced communities, and remote work, which makes it possible for people to live wherever they want (or at least can afford). “The labor market remains relatively tight with workforce participation rates near record levels,” he said, “which means there are often more work opportunities in smaller job markets, such as Danville or Roanoke, than there were a decade or two ago.”
Here’s how much the world (or at least Virginia) has changed: Over the past four years, the Lynchburg metro has added almost as many people 25-44 as all of Hampton Roads — 3,312 in the Lynchburg metro, 4,347 in Hampton Roads. The Roanoke Valley lags further behind (1,849), but that’s still more than some individual localities that are far more populous, such as Arlington, Loudoun and Prince William counties. It’s also notable that virtually all the growth in the 25-44 age group in Hampton Roads has come in the outer parts of that region — Suffolk alone is up 3,325 — while Norfolk and Virginia Beach have seen their populations in that cohort decline. That fits with the observation that people are having to move further out to find housing they can afford. This also helps explain why some rural areas that are losing population are simultaneously seeing housing crises — all these people moving in need a place to live.
With fewer people 25-44 moving into Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, both metros have grown older. “Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia have both seen their median ages rise considerably faster than the country as a whole (which rose from 38.5 to 39.1 from 2020 to 2024),” Lombard said. “Fairfax now has a higher median age than the U.S., likely for the first time in at least a century. Loudoun, which has historically had one of Virginia’s lowest median ages, has since 2020 seen one of the largest increases in its median age among Virginia localities. This has been driven in large part by Loudoun and Northern Virginia attracting far fewer families than in the past and losing more of them. While births are down 10 percent in Virginia since 2015, they have fallen by 13 percent in Loudoun, 19 percent in Fairfax and 28 percent in Arlington in large part due to the loss of families from the region.”
Meanwhile, some places in Virginia — all outside the urban crescent — are now growing younger. Out of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, 46 are now growing younger, all of them either being communities in Southwest and Southside, or rural counties on the edge of the urban crescent, such as Isle of Wight and Louisa.
The community where the median age is dropping the fastest is Martinsville, where in four years time it’s fallen from 39.7 to 36.1 — a consequence of the city gaining population in every age cohort 44 and younger and losing population in every age cohort 45 and up. That’s a drop of 3.6 years while most communities are changing by mere decimal points, either up or down. The city of Franklin is not far behind, with a drop of 3.4 years in its median age.
Some statistics can be misleading
Take a look at the map that shows which localities are growing older and which ones are growing younger (the red and green one). You’ll see that many of the counties in Virginia’s southwestern corner are growing younger.
However, with just a few exceptions, they’re not growing younger because they have a lot of younger people moving in. Indeed, their population in the 25-44 age group is shrinking. The reason some of those counties are growing younger is simply because their populations 65 and up are shrinking faster — generally by death. In those communities, that “youth movement” in the stats shouldn’t be mistaken for a lot of new, younger residents.
By contrast, Martinsville grew younger in a more straightforward way — its population 44 and younger grew, its population 45 and older declined.
Meanwhile, Waynesboro saw its population increase in every age cohort, but the city’s median age declined slightly because Waynesboro saw more growth among young adults (up 559 in the 25-44 cohort) than among senior adults (up 336 in the 65 and older group).
These stats are welcome news for localities that have long been accustomed to bad demographic news, primarily in the form of young adults leaving. They also validate many of the policy initiatives some communities have taken to make themselves more attractive. Pulaski County, for instance, has built a new middle school to replace outdated facilities and invested in recreational facilities. “It’s a comprehensive strategy that focuses on quality of life, affordability, housing options, employment opportunities, unique recreation, and investments in our schools,” said county administrator Jonathan Sweet. “The underlying objective that guides most everything is 40-by-30 — having 40,000 people call Pulaski County their home by 2030. This is all bolstered by a strong marketing department and having our tourism department serve as a sales department as well. But a lot has to do with affordability, opportunities and quality.”
That goal of 40,000 will be hard to reach. Pulaski’s population is currently estimated at 33,108 and projected to decline, not grow, over the next 25 years — primarily because, with an older population, deaths are expected to overwhelm all the other statistics.
Projections, though, are not mandates. They are estimates based on certain facts. Some facts won’t change — people do die. Other facts can. Since 2000, we’ve already seen one big change, this uptick in young adults either staying in rural areas or moving there. In that category, Pulaski stands out in another unusual way: It’s one of the rare localities that is adding more people aged 25-44 than it is age 65 and up.
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