Hamilton County added 4,134 residents last year to grow the county's population by nearly 1.2 percent, according to U.S. Bureau of Census estimates released today.
Hamilton County grew nearly 25 percent faster than Tennessee as a whole during 2016 as urban counties in the state continued to grow at a faster pace than rural counties. But the fastest growing counties in Tennessee were in metropolitan Nashville, which continued to grow at the fastest pace among metro areas of Tennessee.
The new yearly census estimates pegged Tennessee's 2016 population at 6.65 million, which was 0.9 percent more than in 2015. The state ranks 16th in the nation in terms of percentage growth.
Metropolitan Chattanooga, which includes Hamilton, Marion and Sequatchie counties in Tennessee and Catoosa, Dade and Walker counties in Georgia, grew by 0.7 percent in 2016 to 551,632.
The 10 fastest-growing counties in Tennessee were Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Trousdale, Maury, Sumner, Macon, Dickson, Lawrence and Putnam. All 10 counties are either in metro Nashville or bordering counties.
The Nashville metro area, which grew by 2 percent last year to 1.87 million persons, made up 28 percent of the total state population and was the fastest growing metro area in Tennessee.
Knoxville's metro population in 2016 was 868,546, which was up 0.9 percent, compared to 2015.
"As a state, we are seeing slow and steady population growth, and we continue to grow slightly faster than the national average for the third year in a row," said Melissa Stefanini, director of the Tennessee State Data Center, which is a local partner to the Census Bureau. "There could be many reasons for this trend - for example, job growth in the state and people pursuing higher education."
The newly released data also shows that of the state's 95 counties, a total of 67 experienced growth. Of those 67 counties, 24 had growth rates that exceeded the state average of 0.9 percent and 33 grew faster than the national average of 0.7 percent.
"The population growth we are seeing across the state is in part due to net migration, or people moving into and out of the state," Stefanini said. "More than 39,000 people moved to Tennessee in the last year, and we're ranked 11th in the nation for total net migration."
The 2016 data indicates that counties within metropolitan areas - including Rutherford, Williamson, Knox, Hamilton and Wilson counties - are seeing the highest net migration. While most counties in the state are seeing newer residents, the data shows that other counties are losing more residents than they are gaining.