48% of Counties Lost Population, 2018–19

The U.S. population grew by just 0.48 percent in the year ending July 1, 2019. This is the slowest annual rate of growth in 100 years. Growth has actually ground to a halt in many places. According to the Census Bureau's latest estimates, 48 percent of the nation's 3,142 counties lost population between 2018 and 2019.

Even in counties with growing populations, expansion is slowing. The slowdown is occurring everywhere—from the largest urban areas to the most remote rural outposts. A handy way to analyze growth patterns at the county level is by using the federal government's Rural-Urban Continuum, a system of classifying counties by their degree of urbanity. The Continuum is a scale ranging from 1 (the most urban counties, in metropolitan areas of 1 million or more) to 9 (the most rural counties, lacking any settlements of 2,500 or more people and not adjacent to a metropolitan area).

The long-term pattern since 2010 has been one of urban growth—the more urban, the greater the growth. But an examination of the trend in annual growth rates reveals some changes. Counties with a rank of 1 on the continuum (the most urban) grew faster than any other county type in every year between 2010 and 2017. But in 2018 and 2019, the growth rate of rank 1 counties slipped below that of rank 2 counties. Another change has occurred in nonmetropolitan counties. Counties ranking 6 and 8 on the Rural-Urban Continuum had been steadily losing population for most of the decade, but in 2017 they began to record small gains which continued in 2018 and 2019. The gains have not been large enough, however, to make up for losses earlier in the decade. Here are county growth rates for the decade and for the past year by rank on the Rural-Urban continuum...

County population change 2010-2019 (and 2018–19) by Rural-Urban Continuum rank
1. 8.0% (0.54) for counties in metros with 1 million or more people
2. 6.7% (0.64) for counties in metros of 250,000 to 1 million people
3. 4.4% (0.38) for counties in metros with less than 250,000 people
4. 0.6% (0.17) for nonmetro counties with urban pop of 20,000-plus, adjacent to metro
5. 1.6% (0.10) for nonmetro counties with urban pop of 20,000-plus, not adjacent to metro
6. –1.0% (0.01) for nonmetro counties with urban pop of 2,500–19,999, adjacent to metro
7. –1.6% (-0.18) for nonmetro counties with urban pop of 2,500–19,999, not adjacent to metro 
8. –1.0% (0.10) for nonmetro counties with urban pop less than 2,500, adjacent to metro 
9. –2.2% (-0.21) for nonmetro counties with urban pop less than 2,500, not adjacent to metro 

Behind the widespread slowing of population growth is the ongoing baby bust, the aging of the baby-boom generation, and the decline in net migration—both domestic and international. With population growth already slowed to a crawl before coronavirus swept the nation, the percentage of counties recording population losses in 2020 is likely to be greater than the 48 percent of 2019. 

Source: USDA, Economic Research Service, Rural-Urban Continuum Codes and Census Bureau, County Population Totals and Components of Change: 2010–2019