Several major cities within the Hampton Roads region have seen a decline in population since the pandemic, according to demographers with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Recently released annual state population estimates show people moving out of the heavily populated areas of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, while the vast majority of the rural regions in the state experienced a significant population spike. The data compared the population from the April 1, 2020 census with July 1, 2023 estimates.
Hampton Roads’ most populous city, Virginia Beach, lost more than 5,800 people, a 1.3% drop, going to 453,605 in 2023. Newport News declined 2.1% to 182,268. Portsmouth’s population dropped by 1.9% to 96,085.
Populations in Hampton and Norfolk remained flat over those three years. Hampton had a 0.2% population decline to 136,895 people while Norfolk gained 107 people for a population of 238,112.
One of the most notable trends observed across the state was people leaving big metro areas in favor of smaller cities and counties nearby. Two Hampton Roads cities that saw population growth over the three-year period are Suffolk and Chesapeake. Suffolk had 100,690 people in 2023, up 6,366 (6.7%) from 2020. Chesapeake also saw a slight increase, going from 249,422 in 2020 to 252,478 in 2023.
Demographer Hamilton Lombard said the pandemic initially caused the number of deaths to spike and immigration to drop, temporarily slowing U.S. population growth. But the newly released data from the Weldon Cooper Center points to more lasting impacts.
Lombard said there are numerous reasons for the decline in Hampton Roads cities. He said more people are moving out of Hampton Roads than into it because the region is notable for “legacy industries,” such as the defense industry, which hasn’t been growing as fast as the rest of the economy for a while.
He also said several localities have an aging population. He noted younger families in search of new homes likely will move to places where new homes are being built instead of to cities such as Newport News and Hampton, where there is less new housing.
“Places like Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth are pretty close to built out — when they have to knock something down quite often to build more housing,” Lombard said. “So what you’re seeing is, you know, a lot of that new development shifting out to … Isle of Wight and Suffolk. And that’s where you see the growth, simply because that’s where the housing units are being created.”
Isle of Wight saw its population increase 5.9% to 40,873, which mirrored the statewide trend of people flocking to less populated areas.
On the Peninsula, other localities may have also benefited from migration from cities to suburban areas. York County, Poquoson, Gloucester County, and James City County all increased in population. James City County saw the greatest percentage growth, increasing 3.1% to 80,678. Williamsburg, however, saw its population decline 2.1% to 15,675.
“The economy in Hampton Roads has tended to lag behind the rest of the country for a while,” Lombard said. “In the region, we’re seeing not a lot, but steady migration coming out of Newport News in Hampton Roads just going up to Richmond. Because the economy has been doing better there.”
According to 2020 Internal Revenue Service migration data, the most recent data available, 723 people moved to Richmond from Hampton Roads between 2019 and 2020.
Lombard said that while growth accelerated in Virginia and across the U.S. in 2023, it remained slower than in recent decades, with the state and the U.S. growing by less than half a percentage point between 2022 and ’23. He attributed the slower growth to death rates dropping only slowly from pandemic highs and birth rates not rebounding since falling in 2020. In Virginia, there were roughly 13,000 more births than deaths in 2022, a big drop from 27,000 in 2019.
Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth saw a much sharper drop in births than the rest of the state, with Newport News seeing an 8% decline, Norfolk 9% and Portsmouth 6%.
“I suspect a lot of that has been driven by there being fewer families there that would have those children,” Lombard said.
Whether the migration of populations to rural areas is a temporary side-effect of the pandemic or a permanent shift is “the really big question in demography.”
“2023, you’d expect we’d start going back towards pre-pandemic trends,” Lombard said. “And these numbers don’t show that at all.”
He said remote work already was a developing trend before the pandemic, but afterward, it “exploded” and “stuck around.” He believes the shift to remote work in many industries has the potential to reshape many areas throughout the state. Previously, workers lived in heavily congested areas for proximity to jobs. But now they may be able to live in a rural or suburban area while holding a job in a city because remote work has made that possible.
He said remote workers moving to suburban areas could impact other city businesses. For example, he said if remote workers no longer visit offices in downtown Norfolk, the businesses based in that area — that provide services such as lunch, dry cleaning and dentistry — might eventually move elsewhere.
“They’re going to follow them,” Lombard said. “So there’s a multiplier effect if this is persisting.”
He said many cities will need to “rethink what they are doing with their downtowns” in areas with a lot of office space.
Josh Janney, joshua.janney@virginiamedia.com
