Gwinnett County, with 15,700 new residents, tallied one-fourth of Metro Atlanta’s population growth the last year, according to an annual snapshot released Thursday by the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Fulton County came in second with 12,300 newcomers. Cobb added 10,500. And the city of Atlanta continued its population rebound, after years of out-migration, with 4,800 new residents.
In all, the 10-county region added 60,300 new residents between April 2014 and April 2015. Population growth, though, remains well shy of pre-recession, boom-town spikes in population. During the 1990s, for example, the region added an average of 90,000 people per year.
“The Atlanta region has experienced strong employment growth in the past year, helping fuel our population growth,” Mike Alexander, manager of the ARC’s research division, said in a statement. “It’s not the explosive growth we were seeing 10 and 20 years ago, but the trend for the last couple of years is that population growth, like employment growth, is accelerating.”
The growth mirrors the region’s improving economy. The population grew by 1.4 percent the past year, up from 1.2 percent the previous year. Roughly 80,000 jobs have been created too. And metro Atlanta’s unemployment rate, while still above the national average, dropped from 6.4 percent in April 2014 to 5.6 percent in April 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, it was 6 percent.
All 10 metro counties experienced population growth, though the more rural counties slowed considerably compared to pre-recession amounts:
Cherokee: 5,800 people.
DeKalb: 5,500.
Henry: 4,200.
Clayton: 2,200.
Rockdale: 1,500.
Douglas: 1,400.
Fayette; 1,200.
About the Author
