North Carolina kept growing last year despite immigration slowdown
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A market at the Smoky Hollow development in Raleigh. Photo: Courtesy of Visit Raleigh
North Carolina remained one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S. last year, even as the country's population growth slowed significantly amid an overall slump in immigration.
Why it matters: The U.S. population grew just 0.5% from July 2024 to July 2025, per new Census Bureau estimates, adding 1.8 million people.
- That's the slowest rate since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the population grew by an anemic 0.2%.
By the numbers: North Carolina, however, grew by 1.3% from July 2024 to July 2025, adding nearly 146,000 people.
- That was the third most of any state over the same time period, trailing just Texas and Florida.
- There were 123,046 births last year in the state, which was 1,600 more births than the previous year, and more than 107,917 deaths last year. About 10% of North Carolina's growth was due to natural change — or more births than deaths.
- Fun fact: North Carolina last year had the most domestic in-migration of any state — 84,000 people. Next up: Texas, with 67,000.
Yes, but: North Carolina's overall population saw a slowdown in growth from the previous three years. The state added around 34,000 fewer new residents in 2025 than it did in 2024.
State of play: Nationwide and in North Carolina, population growth slowed "largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million," Census assistant division chief Christine Hartley said in a statement.
- Between the lines: The numbers offer some insight into the effects of President Trump's immigration crackdown, though it's an incomplete view, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes.
- Because of the time period covered in the data — July 2024 to July 2025 — they capture only the first few months of Trump's second term.
Zoom in: Nathan Dollar, director of Carolina Demography at UNC-Chapel Hill, told Axios that net domestic migration to North Carolina stayed pretty constant last year.
- But if a slowdown in foreign migration persists over the next few years, the state will likely need to revise down its population estimates for the 2030s.
- "We've had substantial population growth, mostly due to [domestic] in-migration, not just since the pandemic, but since the 90s, even though there were some peaks and valleys," Dollar told Axios. "But we can't assume that we're going to continue to experience that level of growth into 2030 and beyond."