After population growth slowed during COVID-19, Mecklenburg County added nearly 20,000 people from summer 2021 to summer 2022, according to Census estimates released Thursday.
Mecklenburg now has 1.145 million residents. It’s still the second-largest county in North Carolina after Wake, which has about 30,000 more.
From 2020 to 2021, Mecklenburg grew by less than 10,000 people — or less than 1%. That slow growth rate was seen in other urban counties nationwide during the pandemic.
But the latest Census estimates suggest that the county is once again a place that’s attracting newcomers. The population figures include the net difference between births and deaths, as well as how many people move into a county and how many leave.
Mecklenburg grew by 1.74% over the last year. That outpaced the state of North Carolina as a whole, which grew by 1.26%.
But in previous years, the county has usually grown faster, with annual growth rates consistently above 2%.
During the last year, Lincoln, Cabarrus, Iredell and Union counties grew faster than Mecklenburg on a percentage basis — though Mecklenburg added more people than those four counties combined. In South Carolina, Lancaster County just south of Charlotte was the fastest growing in the state, outpacing Mecklenburg.
Brunswick County near Wilmington remains the state’s fastest-growing county and is the seventh fastest-growing in the nation. It’s home to retirees who want to live near the ocean, and it grew by nearly 6% in the last year.
The next two fastest-growing counties by percentage, Currituck and Pender, are also on the coast.
Overall in North Carolina, 1 in 4 counties lost population — most of them rural. In the Charlotte area, that includes Anson, Richmond and Scotland counties.
