Metro Atlanta is still growing by growing its own — the 10-county region added 37,200 residents between April 2011 and April 2012.
"These numbers are not a reflection in in-migration, but of natural increase," said Mike Alexander, the research division chief at the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Natural increase is a demographer's way of saying "babies."
"Very little of it is in-migration," Alexander said.
The region is growing significantly slower than the boom years from 1990 to 2006, when the recession slowed in-migration. During the 2000s, the region routinely added more than 100,000 people each year, and counties such from Gwinnett to Cherokee routinely made lists of fastest growing counties in the U.S., by percentage of population.
At the height of growth, Gwinnett County averaged 22,000 new people a year. In the latest count, it grew by 8,890, ARC numbers say.
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