Editor’s note: Art Woolf recently retired as an associate professor of economics at the University of Vermont. He served for three years as state economist for Gov. Madeleine Kunin beginning in 1988.
It’s a well-known fact that Vermont’s population isn’t growing. From 2010 to 2018 the state’s population grew by only 0.1%, just a fraction of the national rate of 5.8%.
New Census Bureau population estimates drill these aggregate population numbers down to the town level and show that more than half of all cities and towns in Vermont had fewer residents in 2018 than in 2010. Chittenden County was the only county in the state where every town gained population. Lamoille was close, with only one town losing population. Only two localities in Franklin County shrank.
But even in those towns that grew, population increase was small. Only 11 towns in the entire state, out of 252, grew faster than the national average.
In some counties the lack of growth was stark. None of Bennington County’s 17 towns had more people in 2018 than in 2010. Only one of Windham County’s 23 towns added population. That was Townshend, with six more people.
Almost none of Vermont’s traditional cities exhibited any growth. St. Albans City, Barre, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, Rutland, Bennington, Brattleboro, White River Junction, Bellows Falls, Woodstock, Vergennes and Springfield all lost population. South Burlington, Burlington and Winooski were the only cities that grew.
Although growth was universal in all Chittenden County towns and cities, Burlington and Winooski grew by only 1% — and remember that’s over an eight-year period, not per year. The big gainers in Chittenden County were Essex, Williston, South Burlington, Shelburne and Milton. Essex and Williston, two of the largest towns in the county, and indeed in the state, experienced double-digit growth.
Although all towns in Lamoille County save Hyde Park also grew — and it shrank by only three people — none of the county’s towns grew faster than the U.S. average and only Cambridge, Morristown and Stowe had any sizable growth.
Franklin County was another pocket of growth, with only two jurisdictions losing population — Enosburg and St. Albans City. Fairfax, Georgia and St. Albans Town exhibited some of the highest growth rates in the state, and they are all, by Vermont standards, large towns. Their population growth probably reflects their status as bedroom communities to the Greater Burlington job market, with relatively easy commutes into the job centers of Chittenden County. They also have lower housing prices, or at least provide homeowners more housing value for the price, than houses in Chittenden County proper.
Growing Franklin County towns were concentrated along the I-89 corridor. That helps explain why Franklin County towns north of Burlington grew but Addison County towns south of Burlington did not. Commuting from the south along Route 7 is a lot less pleasant than commuting into Chittenden County on I-89. Monkton and Middlebury were the only Addison County towns that grew by any significant amount.
Few towns in Washington County reported any sizable growth, with Barre City, Barre Town, and Montpelier all losing people. The only bright spot in the county was Waterbury, but its 1.5% growth rate was pretty feeble and only amounted to 78 more residents than in 2010.
The Northeast Kingdom performed as one would expect. Only five towns in Caledonia County grew, and none of them added more than 20 people over the past eight years. Only two towns in Orleans County — Jay and Newport Town — grew, Jay probably due to the expansion of the Jay Peak Resort.
Newport Town is another matter. It topped the scales, with a 2018 population 75% higher than in 2010. I don’t believe it. Sometimes the Census Bureau’s methodology leads to weird results. This is one of those cases. Newport may have grown since 2010, but not by anywhere near that amount.
Hardly any towns in the four southern Vermont counties exhibited any population growth. None in Bennington County did. Only six towns in Rutland County grew, and none by more than 1% or 20 people. Only one town in Windham County grew and only six in Windsor County, and none by more than 3%.
Nearly all the population growth in Vermont is in towns that are within 50 miles of downtown Burlington. Just about every town outside that circle has lost population in the past eight years. Those population changes are due to deep-seated structural changes in people’s preferences about where they want to live and to job and other opportunities outside of the Chittenden County area.
Paying people to move to rural Vermont towns, committing state resources to downtown development, bringing high-speed broadband to isolated areas, and other economic development policies may provide limited benefits to the communities these programs affect. But most of the policy proposals that attempt to reverse these population changes are unlikely to have any measurable impact on those towns or counties.
Most Vermont towns had fewer residents in 1960 than they had in 1860. We may be seeing the beginning of that trend repeating itself in the 21st century.
