New data: City of Atlanta just packed on another 10,000 people

Ever get the feeling there’s just more people around Atlanta these days?

It’s a clear boost for vibrancy and business options, but it also triggers disasters like the Ponce de Leon Avenue parking lot near Midtown Promenade on Saturdays. And never-dying Connector logjams.

Today, the Atlanta Regional Commission has released new population-estimate data that lend some logic to the madness, as they’ve counted growth for the calendar year ending this past April.

It’s worth noting the ARC’s numbers, as always, don’t include growing counties such as Forsyth and Hall, where nearly a half-million people live combined.

Anyhow, big picture, the 10-county Atlanta region packed on 78,300 new residents last year for a grand total of about 4.9 million (per the ARC’s tally). That’s a bigger bump than any year since the Great Recession. And that total is larger than 24 states.

Zooming in, population growth is rapidly increasing in the relatively small sliver that is the City of Atlanta.

The city added 9,900 new residents in the past year. Compare that with growth the previous year (7,900) and the year before that (4,800), and a pattern is starting to emerge.

As the ARC notes, a “boom in multifamily housing” and red-hot business climate are helping attract newcomers. Overall, the City of Atlanta—which had been hemorrhaging residents for decades—has grown by 7 percent since the 2010 Census.

Interestingly, the ARC notes the Atlanta region has added more jobs (87,000) in the past year than anywhere outside of Dallas-Ft. Worth.

The region “was slow to emerge from the recession, but strong growth in the past few years shows that our recovery has taken hold,” Mike Carnathan, manager of ARC’s Research & Analytics Group, said in a release. “People are moving here because jobs are plentiful to a wide variety of job-seekers.”

Metro Atlanta’s population swell is still being led by the suburbs. Up north, Cherokee County has led the way since the recession faded, growing by 15 percent.

In terms of sheer growth, however, Fulton County led the way with more than 17,000 new folks in the past year.

Here’s a closer look at the ARC numbers, in chart form:

Atlanta Regional Commission

• Projection: Atlanta will boast country’s sixth largest metro by 2040s [Curbed]