New Census data: Birmingham metro growing, Jefferson County shrinking

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC) - The Birmingham metropolitan area is still growing, but the growth is lopsided — booming on the edges while the urban core quietly shrinks.

New U.S. Census estimates show the 10-county Birmingham area added about 36,500 people between 2020 and 2025, a gain of 2.2%. However, Jefferson County, home to Birmingham itself, lost more than 8,500 residents over the same five-year period and slipped again in the most recent year.

From 2024 to 2025, the metro added nearly 5,700 people overall. Jefferson was the only county in the group with a meaningful annual loss, down 843 residents.

The real growth is in the suburban and exurban ring. Shelby, Tuscaloosa, St. Clair and Cullman counties account for nearly all of the metro’s gains since 2020 — and they’re doing it in very different ways than conventional wisdom of past decades might suggest.

Shelby County remains the region’s population powerhouse — adding more than 15,500 residents since 2020, growing 7%, and logging its best year of the period in 2024–25 with a gain of 2,746 people. That’s more new residents in a single year than all but 3 counties in Alabama.

Shelby County’s growth is balanced: births outnumber deaths, and both domestic and international migration are strongly positive.

Just behind Shelby County are several quieter but faster-changing counties.

St. Clair and Cullman counties are now among the fastest-growing counties in the state. Both rank in Alabama’s top 10 for percentage growth since 2020, and in the top 10 again for growth just in the last year.

The driver is not suburban commuters — it’s international migration.

In Cullman County, deaths now exceed births. Yet the county grew by 1,238 people in 2024–25, the fastest rate in the Birmingham region, because more than 1,300 international migrants arrived in a single year. Over five years, Cullman County has added nearly 7,000 international residents, a transformative change in a county that had fewer than 90,000 people in 2020.

St. Clair County tells a similar story. The county has one of the fastest growth rates in Alabama, up 7.35% since 2020, but its existing population is aging and in natural decline; deaths outnumber births. Virtually all of St. Clair County’s growth, more than 7,400 people over 5 years, comes from international arrivals, not from other Alabamians moving in.

Other outer-ring counties, such as Etowah; Walker; Blount and Talladega counties, are also seeing deaths surpass births. In those places, modest population gains, or even just holding steady, depend almost entirely on a steady stream of people moving in from elsewhere, especially from overseas.

Jefferson County is moving in the opposite direction on the international front.

Census data shows Jefferson County actually attracts Americans from other states and counties. Domestic migration has been positive over the last five years, including a gain of more than 1,800 domestic movers in 2024–25 alone. Jefferson County still records more births than deaths, though that gap is narrowing as the population ages.

What’s pulling Jefferson County’s numbers down is an exodus of international residents.

Between 2020 and 2025, Jefferson County lost an estimated 17,180 international migrants — by far the largest such loss in Alabama. Nearly 3,000 of those departures came in the most recent year. That single factor is enough to erase Jefferson’s gains from births and domestic in-migration and push the county into overall decline.

For now, the suburban and exurban ring is more than offsetting Jefferson’s losses. Five Birmingham-area counties — St. Clair, Shelby, Cullman, Chilton and Tuscaloosa — rank among the top tier of Alabama counties for growth since 2020. Shelby County alone added more people over that period than many entire rural regions of the state.

However, the latest year of data comes with several warning lights.

Seven of the 10 metro counties now have more deaths than births. Tuscaloosa County, which had been one of the metro’s fastest-growing areas, saw its growth slow sharply in 2024–25, adding fewer than 500 people as international migration turned negative for the first time in the five-year period.

Taken together, the numbers point to a Birmingham region that is growing — but growing older, more dependent on newcomers, and increasingly shaped by where international migrants choose to go.

The trends to watch over the next year:

• Whether Jefferson County’s international losses continue, stabilize or reverse.
• Whether Cullman and St. Clair counties can sustain rapid growth that relies almost entirely on international arrivals.
• Whether Tuscaloosa’s slowdown is a one-year blip or the start of a new pattern.
• Whether outer-ring counties with more deaths than births can keep attracting enough new residents to avoid slipping into long-term decline.

Get news alerts in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store or subscribe to our email newsletter here.