New Census estimates today, for 2020-2021 population change
Raleigh MSA added 28,186 residents or 2% over the year, the 10th largest numeric gain among metros (even though the other 9 are substantially larger). This was despite incredibly low national population growth, due to pandemic deaths and fewer births.
I haven’t had a chance to look at the county-level chart, but the map has some interesting trends. Most of ENC continued to lose population (and archrival Mecklenburg seems flat!), but the Sandhills and coast seem to have boomed.
And so, we had growth the merger is gonna be better for us. I feel like some folks on this forum have been so beaten-down by our competitor you guys literally rate your Ls.
If you add the two MSAs, that makes 31,006, about the same as the larger Charlotte MSA grew (31,381).
By absolute growth in the Triangle, Raleigh-Cary is kicking butt with more than 8X the absolute growth of Durham-Chapel Hill.
Wake County has doubled its distance on Mecklenburg since the Census to nearly 28,000. Wake was 1.15M as of last July, and is likely 3 years from 1.2M.
Johnston County (+10,505) outgrew Durham County (+1,293) since the Census. For that matter, Franklin County outgrew Durham County.
The Raleigh-Cary MSA (1,448,411) has passed Oklahoma City MSA (1,441,647) since the Census.
The Raleigh-Durham-Cary CSA (2,144,608) has also passed Nashville CSA (2,143,407) since the Census.
After passing OKC to become the 41st largest MSA, Milwaukee is next on the list, though that will likely take a while since it has a population of 1,566,487 compared to Raleigh’s 1,448,411.
Obviously we would jump several spots if we are combined with Durham’s 654,012.
1,448,411 + 654,012 = 2,102,423, that how essential the merger of the Raleigh-Cary MSA and Durham-Chapel Hill MSA is we outdo Milwaukee, probably Nashville, even Austin.
Milwaukee is actually shrinking. Since April 1, 2020, it lost over 8,000 people while Raleigh-Cary added over 34,000. That 118,000 person difference doesn’t look so insurmountable in that context. If Raleigh-Cary added 28,000 a year for each year following 2021, and Milwaukee lost 5,000 a year, Raleigh-Cary would overtake Milwaukee by 2025.
By current CSA, the Triangle should pass Cincinnati by 2028.
The triangle could be ~2.36M by then. As of last July, Cincinnati was up by around 175,000 over the Triangle but it is growing quite slowly.
By Census 2030, the Triangle should top 2.4M
Wake has the state’s largest university but it kept rolling.
I see that you added Harnett, Moore, and Lee Counties to the mix. If those fell under the Triangle’s purview, our CSA would be nearing 2.5M. Alas, while Lee and Harnett feel like they are possibly in the mix, I can’t imagine Moore moving over anytime soon.
I added in the Sandhills after looking at the Census map. Vacation home spots like Pinehurst saw pretty strong growth in 2020, but not rural areas generally - quite contrary to the conventional narrative.
I just stumbled across this YouTube video about the Southeastern Megalopolis. While a few of his facts are a bit off, he touches on several of the topics we frequently discuss on this forum (Professional Sports, Tourism, etc). @John would need to fact check the growth rate statistics, but there is no denying how far Raleigh has come in the not-so-distance past.
Funny, I was just thinking about this same topic earlier while looking at the NWS severe weather map for today which had a population scatter overlayed. I also remember reading up on this probably a decade ago.
You can almost see that this whole region is beginning to morph together.
I think if we can get some solid High Speed Rail up and down the region we’ll really be on to something.
I’ve heard the term “Piedmont Crescent” many times over the past few years. But getting the bones for decent rail seems to be a pretty pressing issue in tying this area together.
I’ve seen it called the “I-85 Boombelt” a couple of times too.
It’s really interesting because at this point I’d say the whole stretch from Raleigh basically to Montgomery on I-85 is pretty developed Industrial facility wise.
Oh yeah, I saw that video the other day. I subbed to this channel when it was brand new and had less than a 100 followers. Hardly this type of YouTube channel evades my eyes. I haven’t validated his numbers, but they are clearly wrong. Wake County alone had 136,000 in 1950.
The Census Bureau released some 2021 population estimates on fastest growing cities this morning and there’s some interesting data for those with some free time. There’s all sorts of data in here but it’s estimating growth from July 2020 to July 2021. Some stuff that jumped out to me was:
State of NC is estimated to have grown by 94k-ish from July 2020 to July 2021
Wake County took in (estimated) over 16k of that growth from July 2020 to July 2021
The Raleigh-Cary Metro area grew by 28k-ish during that time period
Good question, not sure how they categorize municipalities vs county growth. Just did some filtering of the data for the board here.
Frustratingly I might add is the divergence of Raleigh MSA and Durham MSA. These two MSAs are listed as separate line items in the spreadsheet. The Durham-Chapel Hill MSA (654k) and Raleigh-Cary MSA (1.448M) put this area around 2.1 million people. They list the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia NC/SC MSA at 2.7 million. Not an expert here but it sounds like they get to claim a lot larger land mass area than what Raleigh is getting to claim.
