Vermont’s population grew by less than 0.02% from 2021 to 2022, according to new population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The low population growth — a change of fewer than 100 people out of more than 640,000 residents — mirrors data from 2010 to 2019, when experts and policymakers raised alarms about the state’s aging population, waning birth rate and net loss from people moving out of the state.
But from 2020 to 2021, that trend completely flipped, with a reported 4,800 net gain from Covid-19 pandemic migrants, according to the census. Home sales to out-of-state buyers surged, and ski towns gained more people than the census expected based on pre-pandemic trends.
Now, it appears that Vermont’s population growth in the second year of the pandemic came closer to its pre-pandemic average than to that brief surge. The state gained a reported 2,000 people from domestic and international migration, but that increase was almost completely counterbalanced by deaths and a low birth rate, according to census data.
Michael Moser, head of the Vermont State Data Center at the University of Vermont, cautioned that the data may be skewed by unique challenges in the 2020 census that could resonate down census datasets for years to come.
“We have to keep in mind that there are very many confounding factors,” he said.
Among those factors are the first all-digital census, temporary shifts in people’s residency in the early days of the pandemic, and new rules to protect privacy by obscuring certain datasets. The 2020 census counted almost 20,000 more residents than the 2019 population estimates — but it’s hard to say what may be true growth and what is a remnant of data issues.
“The Census Bureau is trying to claw back closer to reality, but they can’t go back in time. They can only go forward,” Moser said.
But there are other signs that waning migration is more than just a blip in the data. For one thing, it’s reflected in national trends. Rural states gained thousands of new residents in the early days of the pandemic, then reported far less migration in the second year, the Census Bureau reported.
Home sales to out-of-state residents also fell in the second year of the pandemic, according to data from the Vermont Department of Taxes. About 4,000 home sales reported out-of-state buyers in 2022, compared with about 5,200 in 2021.
Kevin Chu, executive director of the Vermont Futures Project thinktank, said via email that telework was part of the reason for the early pandemic’s population boom, along with a variety of reasons for each person: new jobs, family, politics and pandemic safety among them.
“I’d like to know if these new Vermonters are considering staying, and I hope the answer is yes,” he wrote. “I think the state should be doing its best to retain new Vermonters that have moved here in recent years.”
Vermont’s rapidly aging population — reflected in the latest figures — could have long-term impacts for the state’s economy, public services and health care, he said. But he thinks there are still high levels of interest in Vermont.
“The pandemic caused a societal-level moment of reflection. People had to consider what was most important to them, what kind of life they wanted to live, and where,” he wrote.
He said Vermont has a window of opportunity to address that demand by creating additional housing capacity and planning for sustainable — and equitable — population growth.
Research before the pandemic showed that people moving into the state tended to have higher incomes than people leaving. Chu is concerned that trend could continue going forward.
“We can either say, ‘oh, yeah, people are going to want to move here that's going to help with our workforce issues in the long term’ and then sort of be reactive when that movement happens,” he told VTDigger. “Or we can be proactive and say, ‘how do we set up our state to be welcoming and a viable option for everyone and anyone across the socioeconomic spectrum?’”
