The Atlanta metropolitan area has leapfrogged both Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to become the nation’s sixth-largest metropolitan region, according to newly released population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The population in Atlanta’s 29-county region increased a little more than 1% to 6.3 million between 2022 and 2023, gaining nearly 69,000 residents. D.C. and Philly also grew, but not as fast as Atlanta.
While not the fastest-growing metro area in the country, the Atlanta metro — formally known as the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metropolitan statistical area — had the third-largest total population increase in the country between 2022 and 2023, the Census data shows. Only the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metros added more total residents.
The new census figures continue a trend for Atlanta. Last year’s data noted that metro Atlanta in 2022 had outgrown the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area in Florida. At that time, Georgia also surpassed 11 million residents statewide for the first time.
“Metro Atlanta has been a fast-growing place for decades now, so it was inevitably going to happen that we were going to surpass a couple of metros” that had been larger, said Mike Carnathan, managing director of the research and analytics department at the Atlanta Regional Commission. “We did not know when.”
The past year’s growth in the Atlanta area is part of a broader boom in North Georgia, the Census data showed. A pair of counties, including Dawson County, which is part of the Atlanta MSA, and Jackson County, north of Athens, were among the nation’s 10 fastest-growing counties with populations greater than 20,000.
“No big surprise there,” said Joey Leverette, Dawson’s county manager. “It’s a really nice area -- really nice, friendly people. It’s a beautiful area. It’s somewhere people desire to live ... You can be on the lake, or you can be in the mountains, within a very short period of time.”
It wasn’t just major cities in Georgia that saw significant growth. The Census Bureau tracks growth in what it calls micropolitan statistical areas, which are typically smaller cities with populations of more than 10,000 residents in areas with less than 50,000 population.
The Jefferson micropolitan area, which encompasses all of Jackson County northeast of Atlanta, was the fastest-growing micropolitan area in the entire country, the Census said. The area, which in recent years has landed major economic development projects including the SK Battery Atlanta facility, added about 4,600 residents since 2022.
“We’re blessed to be in a great place,” said Jim Shaw, president and CEO of the Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce. Having relocated to Jefferson more than 30 years ago, he called it “a great place to raise three children and be a part of the community. We’ve never looked back.”
Location is a big factor in Jackson County’s growth -- along I-85 connecting Atlanta and Greenville, S.C., but also situated close to both Athens and Gainesville.
But it’s more than just roads, Shaw said. “We have great schools. We have really good leadership” that is collaborative. “We have job opportunities galore,” he said, as well as intangible values like “small-town feel and being very welcoming.”
Meanwhile, the Cornelia micropolitan area — that’s Habersham County, about 75 miles northeast of Atlanta — was also the nation’s ninth-fastest-growing “micro” area.
But North Georgia wasn’t the only part of the state that’s been growing rapidly. Near the coast, Long County, about an hour’s drive southwest of Savannah, was the nation’s second-fastest-growing county, adding about 1,200 people to a population that now is just shy of 20,000. The only U.S. county growing faster was Kaufman County, Texas, an AJC analysis of Census data showed.
