Pennsylvania’s population is stagnant, but these counties saw gains and losses in latest Census report

The U.S. Census Bureau conducts numerous surveys in support of hundreds of federal programs and legislative mandates. One of them is the annual population estimates for states and counties.

The estimates tell how many people lived in an area as of July 1 of a given year, and how that has changed from previous years due to births, deaths, and migration to and from other places in the U.S. and foreign countries.

The estimates for 2023 were released Thursday and show that Pennsylvania once again hasn’t changed much since 2022. But the state’s relative stagnation belies demographic turbulence among the 67 component counties.

Here are some takeaways from the new report.

Population virtually stagnant

The state’s population has rarely shifted more than a tenth or a percent from year to year since the 2010 Census. The exception was a 1.5% increase from the 2019 estimate to 2020, and a 0.32% decline from 2021 to 2022. Pennsylvania is estimated to have topped 13 million residents in 2021, but has declined in the two ensuing years, finishing at 12.96 million people last year.

The map below shows overall population changes from 2020 to 2023 in each county. Hover on or select a county to see its ranking and underlying numbers. Forty-four counties lost population from 2020 to 2023, while 23 counties gained. Of the eight counties in and around the Lehigh Valley, only Bucks and Monroe lost population.

A special note about Forest County: although it ranks last in population growth, it is unique in that about 30% of its population is comprised of inmates at the Forest maximum security prison. Therefore changes in prison population effect its numbers in an outsized way that counties with larger civilian populations don’t see. In April 2020 (when the Census was taken), the Department of Corrections reported 2,327 inmates. That number declined to 2,004 last July, a 14% decrease.

Births and deaths

Within those overall numbers are births and deaths, known in Census-speak as “natural change.” In the decade from 2010 through 2019, the state saw small increases in population due to natural change, meaning that there were more births than deaths. But that changed in 2020 when the state lost 7,386 people to natural change. The loss jumped to 25,416 in 2021, 23,462 in 2022 and 11,079 last year.

Birth rates remained steady during those years, at about 10 births each year per thousand residents, but the death rates jumped during the COVID-19 pandemic. The table below shows average death rates for regional counties before and during the pandemic. The chart beneath shows annual death rates for Pennsylvania as well as Lehigh and Northampton counties.

While the state’s average death rate jumped about 17% during the pandemic, Monroe County’s soared almost 26%. But the highest death rates, both before and during the pandemic, were in Schuylkill, jumping from 13.37 deaths per year for each 1,000 residents from 2011 through 2019, to a rate of 15.43 during the three years of the pandemic.

The map below shows the natural increase from 2020 to 2023 for all 67 counties. Only seven counties — including Lehigh — saw a natural increase over the four years of the report. Hover over, or select a county to see its cumulative numbers.

Migration

The Census Bureau tracks both domestic and international migration, those two categories referring to the origin or destination of a resident’s move, not their citizenship status. Any move within the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or any of the outlying U.S. territories is considered domestic migration. Any move that crosses another country’s border is international.

Pennsylvania has lost population from domestic migration in two of the three years of the new report. (The Census Bureau does not publish migration data in the years of the decennial Census.) International migration remained positive for all three years, resulting in net migration gains in 2021 and 2023, but, with 39,731 people fleeing Pennsylvania for other parts of the country in 2022, the 25,416 people coming into the state from other countries that year was not enough to overcome the deficit.

The map below shows cumulative net migrations gains and losses for domestic and international movements combined. The chart below that shows domestic migration for each of the three years in the state and area counties.

Finally, the last chart shows both domestic and international migration numbers just for 2023. Two counties to the north of the Lehigh Valley show dramatically different experiences with domestic migration: Monroe lost 1,165 people (a rate of 7 per 1,000 residents) who moved to other parts of the country; while Pike County had the state’s highest domestic migration rate, gaining 857 people (a rate of 14 per 1,000 residents) who moved into the county from other parts of the nation.

But Monroe’s loss was less than half the rate that Philadelphia suffered last year. It said goodbye to 27,667 people (17.75 per 1,000), a loss only partially offset by 7,038 people who moved in from foreign lands.