ATLANTA — Maybe Atlanta really is full.
As the somewhat popular joke goes, there just might not be any room left in Atlanta after the metro area has spent much of the last decade as one of the fastest-growing in the country.
While the joke ignores that part of why Atlanta is "full" is the underproduction of housing supply and a resulting spike in rent and home prices, data published by the U.S. Census Bureau in the last week does show people are looking farther and farther outside the perimeter to plant roots in metro Atlanta.
INTERACTIVE MAP: Explore the data in this article | Here's where counties are growing and declining in population in Georgia
Between 2021 and 2022, the Census Bureau noted in a release that of the top five fastest growing counties in America by percent growth, two were neighboring Dawson and Lumpkin counties (5.8% growth each) - about an hour and an hour and twenty minutes north of Downtown Atlanta, respectively.
Census Bureau data also show that some of the largest overall population gains in the last year in metro Atlanta have occurred in places like Cherokee County (6,000+ new residents), Forsyth County (6,000+ new residents) Hall County (5,000+ new residents) and Paulding County (4,500 new residents).
Still, the largest gains in pure numbers of residents happened in places you'd expect - Fulton and Gwinnett (though, it should be noted, in Fulton's case a good chunk of the gain from 2021 to 2022 was re-capturing population loss from 2020 to 2021.)
Here's a look at some of the population trends:
The Big 5 - Slow growth or even slightly declining
Fulton County: +12,103 year-over-year from 2021 to 2022
- 2022: 1,074,634
- 2021: 1,062,531
- 2020: 1,069,370
Fulton saw a fairly substantial surge of about 12,000 new residents between 2021 and 2022 - but as you can see by comparing back to 2020, the gain over the last two years is only about 5,000 after there was a drop from 2020 to 2021.
Gwinnett County: +10,208
- 2022: 975,353
- 2021: 965,145
- 2020: 958,005
Gwinnett is a different case from Fulton: It's long been one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, and continues to grow at a healthy rate (though no longer in the top-10 in the U.S.). The comparison from 2020 to 2022 shows a gain of more than 17,000 residents in the last two years.
DeKalb County: +3,589
- 2022: 762,820
- 2021: 759,231
- 2020: 764,420
DeKalb gained year-over-year from 2021 to 2022, but looking back at 2020, the county is still recovering from population loss from 2020 to 2021. Over the two-year span DeKalb is down 1,600 residents.
Cobb County: +5,261
- 2022: 771,952
- 2021: 766,691
- 2020: 766,374
Cobb saw a healthy bump from 2021 to 2022 after a mostly static change the year before. It now sits solidly ahead of DeKalb as the third-largest county in the core metro.
Clayton County: -754
- 2022: 296,564
- 2021: 297,318
- 2020: 297,623
Clayton County's population has declined slightly each of the last two years.
The suburbs and beyond - Metro Atlanta's real population growth engine
Atlanta's suburbs - and, really, its even farther exurbs - aren't seeing growth like Fulton or Gwinnett in raw numbers, but are seeing much higher rates of growth, especially when you look at two-year trends.
Here are several, broken down by region, that are particularly emblematic of the trend.
North of Atlanta
Forsyth County: +6,516
- 2022: 267,237
- 2021: 260,721
- 2020: 252,878
Forsyth gained more people last year than Cobb or DeKalb, despite having a third of the existing population. Looking back over two years, Forsyth has grown by more than 14,000 residents - roughly 5.6%.
Cherokee County: +6,439
- 2022: 281,278
- 2021: 274,839
- 2020: 268,175
Cherokee's growth mirrors Forsyth's pretty closely, with more than 13,000 new residents since 2020 (about 4.9% growth).
Hall County: +5,299
- 2022: 212,692
- 2021: 207,393
- 2020: 203,735
Hall County's two-year growth rate is a little slower than the other three examples (about 4.4%) but does add to the general picture of Gwinnett's explosive growth the prior decade spilling over into its neighboring counties
West of Atlanta
Paulding County: +4,500
- 2022: 178,421
- 2021: 173,921
- 2020: 169,570
Paulding saw nearly 9,000 new residents from 2020 to 2022, a rate of growth of about 5.2%, making it the hub of suburban growth to Atlanta's west, along with Douglas, Carroll and Coweta counties.
Douglas County: +1,688
- 2022: 147,316
- 2021: 145,628
- 2020: 144,552
Douglas, to the west, isn't seeing growth like Paulding County, but almost 2% growth since 2020.
Carroll County: +3,000
- 2022: 124,592
- 2021: 121,592
- 2020: 119,484
Carroll County, on the border with Alabama, has seen more than 4% growth since 2020.
Coweta County: +2,957
- 2022: 152,882
- 2021: 149,925
- 2020: 146,725
Coweta has also seen more than 4% growth since 2020.
South of Atlanta
Henry County: +3,341
- 2022: 248,364
- 2021: 245,023
- 2020: 241,848
Growth is slower south of Atlanta, but you can still see in Henry a gain in the range of 6,500 residents over the last two years (roughly 2.7%). You can also find gains south of Atlanta in Fayette County and Newton County, which you'll see below.
Newton County: +2,303
- 2022: 117,621
- 2021: 115,218
- 2020: 112,843
Newton is smaller than Henry and even Fayette (for now), but saw more than 4% growth since 2020.
Fayette County: +1,349
- 2022: 122,030
- 2021: 120,681
- 2020: 119,483
Fayette's population gains are more modest than the other counties in this section, but still represent a 2% increase over 2020.
The exurbs - Smaller counties with faster growth
They don't necessarily have large populations, but once you hit the farthest reaches of what might be considered the metro Atlanta region, you hit some counties that are seeing the highest rates of growth - including Dawson and Lumpkin, mentioned at the start of this article.
In particular, you see this effect a lot around Athens, even as Clarke County itself has only seen small growth.
Athens area
Jackson County: +3,619
- 2022: 83,936
- 2021: 80,317
- 2020: 76,717
Jackson County, neighboring Clarke County to the northwest, has seen a remarkable 9.4% growth rate since 2020.
Barrow County: +2,627
- 2022: 89,299
- 2021: 86,672
- 2020: 83,975
Barrow has a more than 6% growth rate since 2020.
Walton County: +3,257
- 2022: 103,065
- 2021: 99,808
- 2020: 97,153
Walton doesn't directly neighbor Clarke County and is perhaps more of a stretch to associate with Athens, but it's still a bit more in that orbit (roughly half an hour drive from county seat Monroe to Athens) than Atlanta's (about 50 minute drive).
It also has seen more than 6% growth since 2020.
North Georgia
Generally, there isn't a ton of population growth in north Georgia, although interestingly you do see it in one particular corridor as you go up GA-400/US-19.
Dawson County: +1,663
- 2022: 30,138
- 2021: 28,475
- 2020: 27,056
Dawson's big jump from 2021 to 2022 placed it fourth in the country for year-over-year population growth rate (5.8%) and its two-year rate of growth works out to 11.4%.
Lumpkin County: +1,906
- 2022: 34,796
- 2021: 32,890
- 2020: 33,631
Going north from Dawson to Lumpkin County, you find 5.8% growth from 2021 to 2022 but they actually lost population from 2020 to 2021, so the two-year growth rate is only 3.7%. It remains to be seen if Lumpkin will see the same surge as Dawson going from 2022 to 2023.
Union County: +828
- 2022: 26,388
- 2021: 25,560
- 2020: 24,798
Going north one more county, you see about 6.4% growth since 2020.
Way south
There are a couple smaller counties seeing growth about an hour-plus south of Atlanta.
Pike County: +456
- 2022: 19,990
- 2021: 19,534
- 2020: 18,936
Not eye-popping raw numbers, but that two-year growth still clocks in at about 5.6%.
Lamar County: +783
- 2022: 19,467
- 2021: 18,684
- 2020: 18,551
Lamar really saw a big one-year spike from 2021 to 2022, about 4.2%.
Jasper County: +692
- 2022: 15,951
- 2021: 15,259
- 2020: 14,666
That's about an 8.8% two-year growth rate for Jasper.
Elsewhere in Georgia
Without going too deep into it, you see the growing-suburb effect in Georgia's other population centers to varying degrees.
- Chatham County (Savannah) grew by about 5,500 residents from 2021 to 2022, but you can find larger rates of growth in its three immediate surrounding counties of Effingham, Bulloch and Bryan (and even Jasper County, S.C. for that matter).
- Bibb County (Macon) slightly declined from 2020 to 2022 (with an increase of a about 100 from 2021 to 2022) but neighboring Monroe County has grown by close to 5% over the last two years.
- Richmond County (Augusta) has been virtually unchanged in population since 2020, while its suburban county to the north, Columbia County, has seen an influx of more than 5,500 residents the last two years (including just shy of 3,000 between 2021 and 2022).
One population center particularly bucked the trend:
- Houston County (Warner Robins) gained more than 5,000 residents between 2020 and 2022.whlie its neighboring counties (in particular Dooly and Twiggs) are among the few in the state with the most population loss.
One population center is fairly static:
- Lowndes County (Valdosta) gained more than 1,000 residents from 2020 to 2022 and its surrounding areas are mostly unchanged.
Other larger population centers have seen declines, without any real corresponding suburban growth.
- Muscogee County (Columbus) lost nearly 2,500 people from 2021 to 2022 and both Chattahoochee and Stewart counties to the south have seen notable declines, and Marion and Talbot counties to the east are basically stagnant - though there has been an uptick in Harris County to the north.
- Dougherty County (Albany) was famously one of the hardest-hit early epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic - its population dropped by nearly 3,000 from 2020 to 2021, and hasn't really recovered any.