A mid-decade check-in on Tennessee’s population estimates shows the 25-to-44 age group is growing faster than 10 years ago and in more rural areas of the state.

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By most metrics, Tennessee’s population increases in the 2020s are off to a hot start. In the first five years of the decade, the state saw its largest five-year increase since the period from 1990 through 1995, when Tennessee grew 8.8 percent and added 432,400 people.

This decade’s addition of more than 387,300 people since July 1, 2020, is the seventh largest in the nation, and the resulting 5.6 percent increase is the ninth largest – impressive figures for the 15^th largest state in the country.

Tennessee has easily outperformed last decade’s initially sluggish gains in the wake of the Great Recession, when the state added 257,300 people over five years. That 4.0 percent increase ranked 25th.

Behind those numbers, two age brackets help explain the shift through 2025. The state’s fastest-growing age group remains those 65 and older, up 174,000 or 14.7 percent since 2020, but the sharpest break from the last decade is happening in a younger age group. An analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2025 population estimates that were released in June shows that a pickup among early-career adults has a lot to do with this decade’s acceleration. Tennessee’s 25-to-44 population has grown 8.9 percent in the first five years of the 2020s, more than seven times its 1.2 percent pace over the same stretch of the 2010s. In raw numbers, the group added nearly 158,800 people – now closing in on the state’s senior gains.

Between 2010 and 2015, 81 of Tennessee’s 95 counties recorded outright population declines among 25- to 44-year-olds. Among the handful of counties that did post gains, Middle Tennessee captured most of the growth: six of the eight largest increases came from the Nashville metropolitan area, led by Davidson County’s gain of nearly 23,000 people. Neighboring Montgomery County, home to Clarksville, was among the top eight largest increases as well.

What a difference a decade makes. Since 2020, 90 Tennessee counties have added early-career adults. The Nashville metro area still makes up about half of the top-10 list of fastest-growing counties. However, six areas across the state are on that list, spanning from Clarksville on the Kentucky line to Kingsport-Bristol at the Virginia border, with Knoxville, Chattanooga and Cleveland filling out the balance in the eastern third of the state (Table 1).

Rural Counties Leading Growth in the 25-to-44 Age Group

The fastest growth rates for early-career adults are not in the state’s large metro counties. They are out in the 78 counties Tennessee classifies as rural [1].

As a whole, the state’s rural county population is up 6.4 percent since 2020 and has matched or outpaced the growth rate of the state’s 17 urban counties every year this decade. Urban counties grew 5.1 percent over the same stretch.

The gap is even wider for 25- to 44-year-olds, where rural counties grew roughly 1.5 times faster than urban ones. Since 2020, the rural early-career population has increased 11.3 percent, against a 7.7 percent increase in urban counties (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Tennessee population change for ages 25-to-44 growth in rural and urban counties from July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2025

Among rural counties, the fastest growth in early-career adults has been in the ring of counties outside Nashville. Wilson County, just east of Davidson County, has seen its 25-to-44 population boom by almost 28 percent in five years, the fastest rate of any county in Tennessee, urban or rural. Maury County, roughly 40 miles south of Nashville along the I-65 corridor, saw an almost 24 percent increase, which is the second-highest in the state (Table 2).

For the balance of the top 10, the focus shifts further east. Sequatchie County, in the valley northwest of Chattanooga, ranks third at 18.9 percent. The county’s sustained strong migration levels have netted more than 2,000 new residents since 2020, and 670 of them are in the early-career age group. Van Buren County, which sits atop the Cumberland Plateau just northwest of Sequatchie, ranks fourth. As the state’s third smallest county, its 225-person gain says more about a small population base than a surge in migration. (Table 3)

But the Knoxville-area counties are the more telling group. Jefferson, Roane, Grainger and Union all border Knox County, and each saw its 25-to-44 population grow by more than 15 percent over five years. Two urban counties complete the arc: Loudon, up 21.5 percent, and Anderson, up 15.4 percent, ranked first and third among the state’s urban counties.

Total population in the Knoxville metro area is up over 62,000 people during the first half of the decade, with half of the growth occurring outside of Knox County. These strong gains have led to some growing pains as the Knoxville metro area has seen the state’s highest increase in housing prices since the second quarter of 2020.

Growing Early-Career Age Population Showing Up Across Tennessee is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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