A decade ago, wages in Southwest Virginia were falling — and falling dramatically.
From 2010 to 2019, weekly pay after inflation had shrunk by 6.6%. Only two other parts of the country saw pay drop by so much. One of those was just over the state line in eastern Kentucky, where pay dropped by 6.9%. The other was in northeast Utah, where pay plummeted by 7.9%.
If you’re looking for an explanation behind why Southwest Virginia realigned politically during that era from Democrats to Republicans, that just might be part of the reason. The economic collapse coincided with the rapid decline of the coal industry that national Democrats were associated with.
This column isn’t about politics, though. It’s about economics — and what’s happened since.
That was then. This is now.
From 2019 to 2025, wages after inflation in Southwest Virginia have been rising — and rising fast. The latest data from federal statistics (mostly the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau) shows that during that time the pace of wage increases in Southwest Virginia rose faster than in all but four other parts of the country (we’ll get to the numbers shortly).
Meanwhile, Southside Virginia had the ninth-fastest rising wage rates in the country from 2019 to 2025.
What’s going on?
The Charlottesville-based demographer Hamilton Lombard has compiled a database that I’m mining to search for these answers.
The first answer is a statistical one: Wages in both Southwest and Southside tend to be lower than elsewhere, so it’s easier mathematically to get a big percentage increase.
However, many parts of the country — including other low-wage areas — saw wage increases slow down from 2010-2019 to 2019-2025, so if Southwest and Southside are showing increases, they’re running counter to that trend. You can see how Southwest Virginia, in particular, pops out on this map. The shades of red show places that have seen wage growth slow down; the ones in green are the ones where it’s been speeding up.
This map measures what are called “sub-state” regions. In Virginia, those correspond to the nine GO Virginia regions.
Before we get to what’s driving this, we have to walk through some tricky statistical stuff, so bear with me. From 2019 to 2025, the rate of wage increases in Virginia was highest in Southside, in GO Virginia Region 3. Wages there are up 10.4%. That places it 30th out of 399 sub-state regions in the country — and the highest in the state. Wages in Southwest are up 5.9%.
Where Southwest Virginia rises to third in the country is the rate at which these wage increases are speeding up or slowing down. Think of it this way: If wages in a region are typically increasing by 10%, then an increase of 11% is a change of just one percentage point. However, if they’ve been rising by just 1%, then an increase to 4% is a change of 3 percentage points — a faster rate of increase, not necessarily a higher wage increase. Yes, math makes my head hurt, too. There will not be a test on this, though. The main thing to know is that here we have two parts of Virginia that have lived through economic traumas (the collapse of coal in Southwest, the collapse of textiles, furniture and tobacco in Southside) and both have now seen an economic turnaround.
Their wages remain lower than elsewhere, but whichever way you choose to measure wage growth, Southwest and Southside are seeing it. I’ll admit the pace of change isn’t as familiar to us as simply measuring wage growth, so let’s stick to wage growth from here on out.
From 2019 to 2025, Southside saw the fastest wage growth in the state, Northern Virginia the lowest.
What’s driving this?
Demographic changes may be playing a part. Most of rural Virginia has seen an influx of new residents; some of those have brought jobs with them in the form of remote work.
We can also see some growth related to job changes within Southwest and Southside Virginia.
Let’s drill down further. We have more specific data available for the biggest metro areas within these regions.
From 2010-2019, both the Bristol metro and the Martinsville metro saw wages actually decrease. So did the micro area called Lake of the Woods in Orange County. Upon closer inspection, that’s just a statistical blip that’s thrown off by federal stimulus payments in 2010; without those elevating the 2010 numbers, Lake of the Woods was on the plus side for the decade, so let’s pass over that.
Now here’s what 2019-2025 looks like.
Here we see wage growth — and the wage increases in the Bristol-Kingsport area were the second biggest of all the metro areas in Virginia. Only the Lynchburg metro was bigger (we’ll get to Lynchburg another day; there’s some fascinating data there).
The wage increases in Southwest Virginia have been concentrated in the Bristol-Kingsport metro. Wages there grew 9.6% from 2019 to 2025; wages in all of the Southwest GO Virginia region grew by 5.9%. The main driver there was in healthcare, where pay increased twice as fast as the next fastest-rising sector, professional services. Healthcare is also a much bigger job sector in the region than professional services, so those wage increases made more of a difference to the region’s economy. It also helped that the healthcare sector is growing. Manufacturing saw smaller wage increases, but that’s a shrinking sector in the region.
My takeaway from this data: Whatever these communities in Southwest and Southside have been doing to reinvent their economies appears to be working. That seems a big talking point.
For the most part, this looks like happy data.
Now, for some figures that aren’t so happy. Here’s wage growth by sub-state area from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026. You’ll see a lot of places in pink where weekly pay after inflation is falling.
My political eye goes to the four GO Virginia regions that are losing ground. Three of those — along the Chesapeake Bay and in Southside — overlap with congressional districts where Democrats have targeted Republican incumbents (Rob Wittman in the 1st, John McGuire in the 5th, Ben Cline in the 6th). If these economic trends have the effect of depressing the Republican vote in those districts, that’s bad news for the incumbents.
We have more political news each week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. During the campaign, that’s where I’m updating the early voting trends and providing an update on what the candidates have been doing (unless, of course, that rises to the level of demanding a daily story). You can sign up here:
