Durham is actually more dependent on natural increase than net migration.
From 2020-2024 out of the 18,000 Durham County gained 7,000 were natural increase. The fifth highest natural increase in the state. Only 10,000 were from net migration.
Most counties in the state are netting negative in that area. I’m doubtful household sizes are shrinking any faster than Wake or Meck
FWIW, and to further compare us to another fast growing metro in the Southeast, just the Raleigh MSA outgrew Nashville’s geographically huge MSA between 2024 and 2025.
Well, it’s “officially” happened. Raleigh cracked 500,000K as of the 2025 Census estimate that was just released for July 2025.
Raleigh: 506,306 (+6481 from July, 2024)
Charlotte USA had a substantial increase to nearly 965K (+21,308). Then again, if Raleigh had over 300 square miles of land too, our growth likely would have also been substantial.
Some others in the Triangle:
Durham: 305,561 (+3691)
Cary:183,582 (+923)
Chapel HiIl: 63,565 (-463)
Apex: 80,419 (+4442)
I know a lot of people on here like to criticize Charlotte, but its increase was the largest numeric increase in the entire country, which I think is pretty cool.
I would have liked to have seen Raleigh’s number higher, but obviously, a lot of the growth in the Raleigh metro is in the outlying areas. Wendell’s population increased 17.3%! That would have been the fourth-fastest rate in the country, but they only count cities with over 20K, and it is now at 19,687.
We’re officially one very small step above “mid-sized” city, then 
Call us “Mid-sized Plus”
Did you just call Raleigh “plus sized” or Chonky?? 
One of only 39 cities in the USA above 500,000, and we got there before Miami.
Charlotte has definitely been hitting the growth really hard because they’ve successfully combined infill urban growth with edge city suburban growth that remains within their city limits. They also effectively don’t have to compete for annexation growth within Mecklenburg like Raleigh does within Wake due to their massive limits and fewer competing municipalities. Charlotte will continue to outgrow Raleigh while Wake will continue to outgrow Mecklenburg, and both will be affected by large land areas.
Raleigh, Wake Forest, Knightdale, Rolesville, Cary, Apex, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina had about 21,500 in growth in similar area as Charlotte fwiw.
That’s not surprising to me.
Wake adds more folks than Mecklenburg and 7 of the fastest growing municipalities in the state are in Wake. It’s all about how the pie is sliced, and it’s sliced in smaller pieces here than in Charlotte. It’s 6 of one, and half dozen of the other.