Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Stanly County grew by .95 percent from 2019 to 2020, new U.S. Census Bureau estimates show.

The county is now home to 63,239 people. It added almost 600 new residents.

In 2019, the estimated population was 62,645.

When looking over the past decade, the county has grown 4.4 percent since 2010, when there were an estimated 60,578 people.

Stanly actually lost residents 2010 to 2012, before gaining 171 people in 2013 and, besides a small dip the following year, the county has continually increased its population every year since. It gained 205 people in 2016, while the following year, the population increased by 629, the largest one-year increase in the past decade.

“I certainly think we’re going to continue to see growth here,” said County Manager Andy Lucas. “Stanly County is a great place to raise a family.”

With a lower crime rate, cost of living, tax rate and housing prices compared to surrounding counties, “your money goes further here,” Lucas said.

Most neighboring counties to the west outpaced Stanly’s growth percentage-wise — Cabarrus grew the fastest at 2.4 percent, followed by Union at 1.9 percent — while many of its rural counterparts to the east had more modest gains. Montgomery grew only 0.11 percent while Richmond lost 0.97 percent of its population.

Stanly’s growth outpaced all but one of its four peer counties. Pender, along the coast, grew 2.58 percent. Lee was just beyond Stanly at 0.94 percent. Haywood grew by 0.74 percent, followed by Granville at 0.21 percent.

Mecklenburg is now the second-largest county in the state as Wake County, home to Raleigh, overtook it — 1.13 million to 1.12 million. Mecklenburg grew by 1.4 percent from 2019 to 2020.

North Carolina, which grew 0.95 percent, added almost 100,000 new residents and now stands at 10.6 million people. In 2019, the estimated population was 10.5 million.

The state will pick up one congressional seat.

There is no specific data yet regarding how much each city or town has grown. That will come out later this year.

While Lucas expects each of Stanly’s municipalities to grow over the next 10 years, for the purpose of the U.S. Census data, he imagines the largest growth from 2019 to 2020 likely occurred in Albemarle and Locust.