By ANDREW WEBER, Austin Monitor
Yep. A lot more people have moved to Austin, the Census Bureau confirms.
The latest U.S. Census Bureau data confirms something you’ve definitely noticed or complained about in the last eight years: Austin is growing.
Numbers released on April 19 show that the Travis County population increased by more than 21 percent between 2010 and 2018 from 1,030,539 to 1,248,743.
The largest adjacent county, Williamson County to the northeast, increased by nearly 33 percent from 2010 to 2018, from 426,284 to 566,719.
All other counties that border Travis County also increased with much lower populations in general.
Hays County to the southwest increased by over 40 percent from 158,212 to 222,631 from 2010 to 2018.
Bastrop County to the southeast increased by 17 percent during the same timeframe to 86,976 from 74,362.
Burnet County to the northwest increase by just over 11 percent to a population of 47,542 from 42,755.
Blanco County to the west also increased by just over 11 percent from 2010 to 2018 from 10,510 to 11,702.
Caldwell County to the southeast increased by 13.4 percent to 43,247 in 2018 up from 38,131 in 2010.
Texas growth
But that growth isn’t confined to the Austin area.
The data put Texas counties and metro areas in the top 10 of all measures for population growth over the last year – and in the time since the last census, according to the numbers released in mid April.
Harris, Collin, Tarrant and Bexar counties were among the top 10 counties that saw the largest population growth last year. Harris County added 605,000 people in 2018 – the most in the U.S.
Sandra Johnson, a demographer with the Census Bureau, said that’s been the case in Texas since 2010.
“What we’re seeing in these estimates is consistent with the general trend of growth that we’ve been seeing in the South and the West this decade,” she said. “So definitely the population of Texas is on the rise.”
The Dallas and Houston metro areas led the nation in terms of numeric growth since 2010. Austin ranked ninth over that same time period.
Percentage-wise, the Austin-Round Rock area has grown more than any other Texas large metro area since 2010 – 26.3 percent – according to the Census Bureau.
The new estimates put the area’s 2018 population at more than 2,168,000 – a 3 percent increase in the last year. Much of that growth is from – you guessed it – people moving here from other parts of the U.S.
“What we saw was that 29,000 people moved into the (Austin) area from other parts of the country,” Johnson said. “So, domestic migration was the largest contributor to the growth of Austin over the past year.”
Births outnumbered deaths in the area by 16,000, she said.
Just down Interstate 35, Hays County had the second-highest percentage increase since the last census – a 41 percent bump since 2010. And for 2018, if you look at how many more people lived in an area, the bureau notes that Harris, Collin, Tarrant and Bexar counties were all in the top 10 for numeric growth.Austin Monitor, an online, nonpartisan, 501(c)3 nonprofit publication that covers local government and politics in and around Austin. This story was produced as part of the reporting partnership with KUT.
