Jobs, mild climate behind N.C. population growth

By Jon Ostendorff, USA TODAYUpdated 1m ago |

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's population jumped 18.4% in the past 10 years, and cities including Charlotte, Raleigh and Wilmington led the way, according to 2010 U.S. Census data released Wednesday.

Charlotte continued its reign as the state's largest city with a 35.2% gain to 731,424. Raleigh grew 46.3% to 403,892 people.

The state's Hispanic population grew a whopping 111%, going from fewer than 400,000 to 800,120, to move North Carolina to 11th in the nation in Latino residents, according to demographer William H. Frey of The Brookings Institution.

The number of non-Hispanic white residents grew 13%, and the non-Hispanic black population grew 18% to 2 million. North Carolina has the sixth-highest black population in the nation, Frey said.

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The growth is part of a trend of people leaving the Northeast for better climates and jobs in the South, says Bob Coats, coordinator of the North Carolina Data Center.

North Carolina's military communities grew slower, by half, than the rest of the state because of the largest wartime deployment since Vietnam, the data show. The 2010 Census estimates 30,000 from North Carolina were deployed during the count.

Deployed military personnel are included as part of the state's total population of 9.5 million but not in county-by-county counts, Coats said.

That means officials in counties such as Cumberland, home to Fort Bragg, and Wayne, with Pope Air Force Base, will have larger populations when the troops return, Coats said.

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"We want to try to improve the process so that we count deployed persons and we count them to the right area," Coats said.

Union County, near Charlotte, was the state's fastest growing at 62%, with 201,292 people. Camden County, near the Virginia line, grew 45%, to 9,980 people.

Coats said spillover from Charlotte (in the case of Union County) and from Newport News and Norfolk, Va., (in the case of Camden) is behind the increases as people look for lower priced land in exchange for a longer commute.

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