Lehigh County leads in one category of newly-released Census data. Pennsylvania is shedding people, getting older, more diverse.

The Census Bureau released new data Thursday, estimating population by age and race groups for every county as of July 1, 2022.

The data are released annually as a follow-up to the decennial Census last done in 2020. Comparing population changes over two years doesn’t establish much of a trend, so The Morning Call also included the population estimates from 2012 to make long-term comparisons.

While the shorter trends tend to echo the long-term ones, the state is far from monolithic in its makeup, with wide differences among the 67 counties. Lehigh and Northampton counties stand out in a few categories.

Population count

Pennsylvania’s total population has grown slightly since 2012, increasing 1.6% from 12,767,118 a decade ago to 12,972,008 last year. The state barely topped 13 million residents in 2021, but lost 40,000 people, according to the 2022 estimate.

The map below shows population totals for each of the 67 counties. Select — or hover over — a county to see its annual population estimates since 2012.

Lehigh and Northampton counties were among the 24 counties that added people. All of the counties in southeastern and eastern Pennsylvania added to their population with the exceptions of Schuylkill and Monroe.

The following map shows similar information for population change since 2020, reflecting various effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Note that Philadelphia, which gained about 1% over the last ten years, dropped a little over 2% of its population from 2020 to 2022. The state’s most populous county recorded its highest resident count in the last 40 years — 1,600,600 people — in 2020.

The county with the fastest population growth during the pandemic was Pike, which is on the furthest fringe of the New York metropolitan area, gaining 3.4% over two years to end with more than 60,000 residents. It was followed by Cumberland, Adams, Chester and Northampton counties. Carbon County was among the nine counties that grew at more than 1% over two years. Lehigh County grew at less than half that rate.

The biggest loser in the state was Forest County, which lost 4.8% of its population over two years. But the tiny county in northwestern Pennsylvania has about a third of its population comprised of inmates at a men’s state prison, disproportionately affecting its numbers.

An aging population

The United States’ median age — defined as the age at which half the the population is older, and half younger — crept up to 38.9 years last July. But Pennsylvania’s median is almost two years higher: 40.9 years.

Among the counties, Lehigh’s 39.1 years is third-youngest after Centre (34) and Philadelphia (35.1). The latter two counties are also the only ones in the state below the national median.

The highest median ages are in Sullivan and Cameron counties, at 56.8 and 52.8, respectively. The sortable table below shows both 10-year and two-year changes for all counties.

Changes in median age can have several causes. An area’s median could rise either from having fewer young people, or more older people, or some combination of both. Thursday’s data release does not explain whether changes are due to migration, births or deaths.

As the oldest Baby Boomers turned 76 last year, every Pennsylvania county saw its 65 and older population increase from 2020 to 2022, including all the smaller groups within that except for the very oldest, those age 85 and over. Their numbers fell in 56 out of 67 counties, leading to an overall decrease of 3.5%. Except for a slight increase in those age 30 to 39, all the younger age groups showed a decline over the last two years.

The changes over the last decade generally mirror the patterns of the past two years, only with larger gains or losses accumulating over 11 years. The exception is those age 80 to 84, who declined 2% since the 2012 counts, but increased over 4% since the decennial Census.

Increasing diversity

Pennsylvania echoes the national trend of fewer people self-identifying as non-Hispanic white, dropping from 78.7% in 2012 to 74.5% last year. The trend is more pronounced among children and teens where the numbers declined from 70.2% to  64.7% in the same period. The percentages are markedly higher among those 50 and older, where 84% currently identify as non-Hispanic white compared with 87.1% a decade ago.

The changes are not occurring uniformly across the state. The map below shows how each county changed over the last decade, with Lehigh County topping the list for fastest decline in its white population. The most diverse county by far remains Philadelphia, where only one-third of its 1.57 million residents identify as non-Hispanic white. It is also the only majority minority county in the state.

The chart below shows a snapshot of the current racial makeup of several counties in and around the Lehigh Valley.