The Commons in downtown Columbus, and the Bartholomew County Courthouse are shown. The metro area and county are among Indiana’s fastest-growing for 2022, though statewide population growth was the lowest in a decade due largely to effects of the pandemic.
The Columbus metro area’s population increased by just 1% in 2022, but that was good enough to lead all the state’s metro areas in growth, according to an analysis from Indiana University researchers.
Columbus’ metro area reached a total population of 83,540 residents during a year in which an analysis by the Indiana Business Research Center at the IU Kelley School of Business found that statewide population growth was the smallest since 2015, largely due to the COVID pandemic.
Indiana added 19,505 residents in 2022 to reach a total population of 6.83 million, according to the latest population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the smallest annual increase since 2015 and was only the second time in 35 years that the state added fewer than 20,000 residents in a year, the IU analysis said.
Bartholomew County’s population increased by 810 people in the past year, according to STATS Indiana.
Statewide, researchers said that for a second consecutive year, a lower birth rate was the primary driver of the state’s slow growth.
“Due largely to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of deaths in Indiana remained exceptionally high in 2022,” said Matt Kinghorn, senior demographer at the Indiana Business Research Center. “Add in another year with relatively low fertility rates, and there were only 1,024 more births than deaths in the state last year.
In the decade prior to COVID, Indiana had an average natural increase of roughly 21,150 residents. Indiana, however, did not fare as poorly as nearly half the states. IU reported that 24 states had a natural decrease in 2022, meaning deaths outnumbered births.
In addition to the Columbus metro area, other Indiana metros that showed relatively strong growth last year include Fort Wayne (0.6%) and Lafayette-West Lafayette (0.5%).
At the other end of the spectrum, seven of Indiana’s 12 metro areas lost population in 2022, with Michigan City-LaPorte, Bloomington and Terre Haute showing the largest rates of decline, researchers reported.
On a countywide basis, Bartholomew County’s growth of 1% from July 1, 2021 to July 1, 2022 was relatively robust, good for eighth-best in the state, according to STATS Indiana. Generally, Indiana’s fastest-growing counties were in suburban Indianapolis and southeast Indiana, outside Cincinnati.
Among other counties in our region, Johnson County recorded a population increase of 0.8%, Decatur County grew by 0.4% and Jennings County by 0.1%. Brown and Jackson counties’ populations remained statistically unchanged.
While some rural counties grew somewhat, many saw sharp declines. Blackford, Miami and Orange counties had the state’s sharpest drops last year, with each falling by roughly 1%.
Nevertheless, the analysis did find a silver lining for Indiana’s rural counties.
“In a notable shift, five rural counties were among Indiana’s 16 fastest-growing ones in 2022. The state’s 23 rural counties — counties that are not designated as being part of either a metropolitan or micropolitan statistical area by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget — combined for a 0.1% increase last year. Between 2010 and 2020, by contrast, only five rural counties posted a population gain at all, and rural Indiana declined by 2.2% as a whole.”
Fastest-growing counties
Here are the top 10 Indiana counties for population growth last year, according to STATS Indiana data:
- Hamilton: 2.1%
- Ohio: 2.0%
- Hendricks: 1.7%
- Boone: 1.6%
- Switzerland: 1.6%
- Hancock: 1.5%
- Clark: 1.1%
- Bartholomew: 1.0%
- Pulaski: 0.9%
- Warrick: 0.9%
More online
For more statistics on this Indiana population data, visit stats.indiana.edu/population/popTotals/2022_cntyest.asp
