Estimates show over 52,000 people moved to Richmond since 2020
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Image: Courtesy of UVA's Weldon Cooper Center
The Richmond region has grown at its fastest rate ever since 2020, according to just-released Virginia population estimates from UVA's Weldon Cooper Center.
Why it matters: Population estimates help localities plan for the future.
Driving the news: Last year, Virginia finally started attracting more residents from other states than it lost, Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center, tells Axios.
- Many (many many) of Virginia's newcomers continue to show up in the Richmond region.
Zoom in: Chesterfield, of course, added the most new residents in the region both in 2024 and since 2020. The RVA exurbs — New Kent, Goochland and Louisa — are growing the most in the region by percentage change.
- Between 2020 and 2024, Richmond, Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico added just over 52,000 people.
- Those numbers equate to roughly the entire 2020 populations of Powhatan and Goochland combined moving into metro Richmond — in four years.
- More than half of the metro area's population growth — 30,277 people — went to Chesterfield.
Meanwhile just south of Richmond, Petersburg is attracting new residents at the highest rate since before World War II, Lombard notes.
The big picture: The U.S. Census Bureau does official population counts every 10 years and releases its American Community Survey population estimates annually, but those tend to come out about a year behind.
- So UVA's estimates are fresher and show how the state's population was shifting last year, as opposed to the latest ACS estimates, which came out in September for 2023 numbers.
- And UVA's data has historically been pretty spot on, Lombard tells Axios.
The bottom line: People just can't stop falling in love with Richmond and moving here.