Top 10 states in numeric growth: 2015 to 2016
State /2016 population /Amount of growth1. Texas /27,862,596 /432,9572. Florida /20,612,439 /367,5253. California /39,250,017 /256,0774. Washington /7,288,000 /127,7105. Arizona /6,931,071 /113,5066. North Carolina /10,146,788 /111,6027. Georgia /10,310,371 /110,9738. Colorado /5,540,545 /91,7269. Oregon /4,093,465 /68,83110. South Carolina /4,961,119 /66,285Source: U.S. Census Bureau
After near-paralysis during the worst of the recession, Americans are increasingly on the move, and a lot of them are coming to Georgia.
The state's population grew by 110,973 between 2015 and 2016 - the seventh-largest surge in the nation, according to data collected and analyzed by the U.S. Census Bureau and released Tuesday.
By mid-2016, there were 10,310,371 people in Georgia, the bureau said.
In the past six years, Georgia has added 621,691 people - a 6.4 percent expansion of the population. That compares to a national increase in that time of 14.4 million people, a 4.7 percent increase. The U.S. population is currently at more than 325,165,000.
In late 2010, the Georgia unemployment rate was 10.5 percent - which did not include thousands of people who had left the workforce and stopped looking for a job. The current rate is 5.3 percent, and that includes a surge of people who have recently entered the workforce.
Texas added the most folks - about 433,000 people - followed by Florida, California, Washington and Arizona. The fastest-growing state in the South was North Carolina, which just barely outpaced Georgia, adding 111,602 during the year.
"States in the South and West continued to lead in population growth," said Ben Bolender, chief of the Population Estimates Branch. "In 2016, 37.9 percent of the nation's population lived in the South and 23.7 percent lived in the West."
Tennessee's population has also grown in the past year by about 56,000 people.
The Census Bureau's 2016 estimate for Tennessee is 6,651,194, which is about 0.9 percent more than 2015.
Between 2000 and 2010, Tennessee's population grew by 11.5 percent. The new estimates show the state's population has grown by another 300,000 people, or nearly 5 percent, since 2010.
The U.S. population, meanwhile, posted one of its lowest growth rates since the late 1930s, shortly after the Great Depression, said Brookings Institution demographer William Frey. That's largely because baby-boomer generation population declines haven't been fully replaced by new births or immigration.
Percentage-wise, the fastest growing state was Utah, which grew 2.03 percent in one year.
Eight states had population losses this year, including three - Pennsylvania, New York and Wyoming - that posted gains last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Illinois had the biggest drop, losing more than 37,000 people.
Economics is clearly a big part of the story. The states that have lost population over the past several decades tend to be economically depressed. And changes in economics move the needle on population.
North Dakota had been the fastest-growing state for four years running, largely on the strength of the boom in oil production. But the state dropped out of the top 10 this past year, as a result oil prices crashed and many oil rigs shut down.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution and the Associated Press contributed to this story.