Charlotte region growth is big but uneven, new figures show. See which areas are booming
The Charlotte metro area population growth over the past year boosted it ahead of Orlando’s, but not all growth was equally distributed in the area.
Mecklenburg County grew at a slower pace last year compared to its surrounding, more suburban neighbors — and the state as a whole — according to new population estimates released this week from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Demography experts say there are potential population shifts toward more amenity-rich parts of the state in the west or suburbs and exurbs around urban cores.
That movement could be driven by people seeking more affordable places to live with more space during the coronavirus pandemic.
“In many ways this pattern of growth is way more even, in that we have more counties that grew last year than grew in the past decade,” said Rebecca Tippett, director of Carolina Demography at UNC Chapel Hill. “The real question is, are we seeing new growth patterns or is this an artifact of some pandemic-related migration pattern?”
Tippett cautioned against making assumptions about the shifts until more data is available, likely in the next few years.
Here’s a look at the latest highlights in the Charlotte area.
Slow growth in Mecklenburg and Durham
North Carolina grew by 112,000, about 1%, between April 2020 and July 2021, census data show. That’s greater than the national rate of 0.1%.
But two counties — Mecklenburg and Durham — grew more slowly than the state at 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively, according to Tippett’s analysis. In those cases, there were more people who moved out of than moved in, contributing to the slower growth rates, she wrote in a blog post.
Both counties had large estimated influxes of international migrants, according to Tippett, but even larger numbers of people leaving for other counties and states.
Counties around Mecklenburg saw growth
Eight counties around Mecklenburg saw larger increases in population compared to the region’s urban core.
Iredell, for example, added 4,338 people, growing by 2.3%, between July 2020 and July 2021, according to an Observer analysis of census data. It’s total population is now 191,968.
Cabarrus County, home to Concord, now the 10th largest city in the state, grew by close to 2%, adding a little over 4,000 people in that time period. That brought it’s population to 231,278, census estimates show.
And Lancaster County, S.C., saw the largest population increases, adding 3,684 people — a nearly 4% increase from the previous year. It now has 100,336 people calling it home.
In fact, Lancaster was one of four counties in the U.S. that crossed the 100,000-resident threshold last year. The others were Cleveland County, which borders Lincoln and Gaston counties just west of Charlotte, as well as Bastrop County, Texas and Grant County, Wash.
Charlotte overtakes Orlando metro
The U.S. Census Bureau looked at population estimates for 384 metropolitan statistical areas along with thousands of counties.
The Charlotte area overtook Orlando’s metro region as the 22nd most populous in the nation, according to the census estimates.
And the Charlotte and Raleigh metro areas both placed in the top 10 for growth between July 2020 and July 2021, according to an Observer analysis of census estimates.
The Charlotte metro area, which includes Concord and Gastonia, grew by 31,381 people to a total population of 2.7 million people. It was ranked No. 9 out of all metro areas in the country in terms of population growth in that one-year period.
The Raleigh-Cary metro area grew by 28,186 people in that time period, for a total of 1.4 million people, but was still behind the Charlotte metro, and ranked No. 10.
Leading the nation in overall growth increases was the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, which added 97,290 people, taking its total to 7.7 million residents.
More deaths than births in most counties
More than 73% of U.S. counties experienced what’s known as natural decrease last year, according to U.S. Census estimates. That occurs when there are more deaths than there are births.
Fewer births, an aging population and increased mortality — driven by COVID — were all factors in natural decrease, according to the Census Bureau.
Some places in the country saw this more than others. Every county in Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, for example, experienced natural decrease last year.
In North Carolina, 84 counties had more deaths than births, Tippett found. “This means that the state’s population growth over this period was entirely due to more people moving into the state than moving away,” she wrote in her blog.
But Mecklenburg was among 16 counties that saw the opposite trend — more births than deaths. This trend was found in major metro areas or counties tied to the military.
Mecklenburg was also among four counties where natural increase was the only source of growth, along with Onslow, Cumberland and Durham counties. This differed from pre-pandemic trends for Mecklenburg and Durham.
Database editor Gavin Off contributed to this report
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 4:23 PM.
