Worcester County Influx: New Census Data Show Population Rise

WORCESTER, MA — Worcester County was one of the few places in Massachusetts that added new residents over the past few pandemic years, according to a new Census Bureau report Thursday.

Overall, population growth and decline are returning to pre-pandemic levels in the nation’s 3,144 counties, according to the Census Bureau’s 2022 population estimates.

Worcester County had a population of 859,708 as of July 2020, and that number grew to just shy of 863,000 as of July 2022 — a total addition of about 3,200 residents.

And while that might not be an enormous number, other nearby counties lost residents over the pandemic years. Suffolk County lost nearly 27,000 residents over two years, and Middlesex County — the largest county in the state — lost over 11,000 residents. Essex and Hampden counties also lost residents while Bristol and Plymouth grew slightly.

All 10 of the top fastest-growing counties were in the South or West, and nine of the 10 were metropolitan counties. Also, according to the report, some urban counties in New York and San Francisco that saw significant declines in their populations in 2021 saw people moving back in 2022.

Counties with large universities also saw their populations rebound as students returned to on-campus learning. One example: Whitman County in Washington — where Walla Walla University is located — lost 9.6 percent of its population between 2020 and 2021 when students went home during COVID, but grew by 10.1 percent last year, the most of any county with more than 20,000 people.

Similar patterns were seen in metropolitan counties in the South and West that are fully recovering their population. For example, Dallas County, Texas, the nation’s eighth-largest county, lost 22,000 people between 2020 and 2021, but gained 13,000 people from 2021 to 2022 for a growth rate of 0.5 percent, the report said.

The report showed 52.5 percent of counties saw growth from 2021 to 2022, while 47.1 percent lost population. Eleven counties (0.3 percent) saw no changes in their populations.

Nearly all the largest counties, those with at least 100,000 people, experienced population growth, the report said. One notable exception is Los Angeles County, California, whose downward population trend continued in 2022, with a loss of 90,704 people. In 2021, the county lost about twice that number (180,394).

The greatest population losses were in counties with fewer than 10,000 people. Almost 61 percent of them lost population, compared to about 38 percent that grew.