“'Historically, the statewide growth rate has fluctuated over the decades, and this slower pace of growth is not unanticipated given the nature of the current demographic trends of lower births, higher deaths and fewer people moving in,'” said Shonel Sen, senior demographer from the Cooper Center’s Demographics Research Group."

"Hamilton Lombard, who works for the demographics research group at the University of Virginia, said Portsmouth has seen some decline over the last few years. But he said population growth across Hampton Roads in general has been lagging areas like Richmond and Northern Virginia, and also the southeastern region of the U.S."

"Previous studies have shown that fertility rates dropped during the pandemic, but they didn’t really look at the differences across states. Adelman and her colleagues analyzed changes in fertility rates in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. during the pandemic’s first two waves. To do so, they used data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 2020 U.S. Census and the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, which estimated state populations nine months after each COVID wave in 2021."

"Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia, calls my attention to... data, which looks at net in-migration by age and income. 'The data has a good deal of suppression to preserve privacy, which makes it difficult to interpret, but it seems to show that the main income groups Virginia is losing are those earning over $75,000 and 35 and older,' he tells me."

"To Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, the parallels between today’s remote-work boom and the urban exodus of earlier decades 'are maybe stronger than a lot of people would like to admit. It’s as if the speed limits had doubled. People can live twice as far out.'" 

"The Richmond region is the fastest-growing metro area in the state, according to a census data analysis by the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Policy. The average number of Northern Virginians moving to the area jumped 36% in 2020 and 2021, compared to 2012-2019, according to the study."

"The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, which publishes annual population estimates between censuses for Virginia’s cities and counties, found that the Richmond area grew by 2.1%, or 27,640 people, from 2020 to July 2022."

"The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia recently released its latest figures showing how much the population has changed locality-by-locality since the 2020 census. I dealt with the major trends in a previous column: Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads are losing population, the Richmond metro is now the fastest-growing part of the state, but we’re also seeing many rural areas gain population."

"It is ideal for those older adults who have all the infrastructure and all the surrounding environment is supportive of healthy aging," Baik says. "However, some older adults have different experiences, and they may stay in their places without their choice because they do not have enough financial resources."

However, we do know that Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, says if there’s anything that can dramatically change the migration patterns for rural Virginia, it’s remote work.

"Overall, the statewide growth rate has decelerated over the last few decades, and it’s expected to hold true to that pattern,” Sen says. “That assumes the commonwealth continues to experience lower birth rates, higher death rates and fewer people moving into the state.

High prices — and price increases — are worst in Northern Virginia, where home costs rose more between 2000 and 2019 than any other metropolitan area on the East Coast, according to Hamilton Lombard, a demographer with the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia.