New Census estimates show most cities and towns in North Carolina continued to add residents in 2020.
Carolina Demography at UNC Chapel Hill analyzed estimates from the Census Bureau. There are two ways to look at the figures.
In terms of raw numbers, Charlotte added the most residents, but interesting trends show up when you sort the data by percentages.
Wendell and Zebulon in Wake County saw their populations increase by 18% and 15%, respectively. They’re followed by a quartet of Brunswick County communities—Navassa, Leland, Northwest, and Calabash, which also registered double-digit growth.
Winston-Salem grew by just 877 residents, but that was enough to push the city’s population past 250,000. And Carolina Demography estimates that Wake Forest’s population will reach 50,000 by the end of this year.
In all, more than 60 percent of municipalities gained population from 2020 to 2021. About a third of those grew faster than the state figure of 1.1 percent.