(The Center Square) — Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission recently released its annual report to give legislators a high-level overview of how the commonwealth fared economically and otherwise in recent years — compared to its historical data and other states’ performances.
Among its 36 featured points of comparison, the report captured pieces of a stubborn population trend Virginia’s leadership is doing its best to reverse: the state’s stellar and uniquely consistent bond rating, highly educated percentage and relatively low poverty levels.
Virginia is the 12th most populous state, reaching a population of 8.72 million in 2023, up 0.4% from 2022 and similar to the growth it saw from 2021-22 but less than the previous two years.
Though Virginia has seen modest population growth over the past ten years, that’s only because its births have outnumbered its deaths — and the number of people leaving the state. Since 2013, Virginia’s out-migration has exceeded its in-migration, meaning that for those who have the choice, more are leaving than coming to the commonwealth.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has continuously expressed concern over this, so much that Southwest Virginia’s Cardinal News dubbed him the “demographics governor.” Most recently, he mentioned it in his State of the Commonwealth address.
“Virginia has a population migration problem. The data is irrefutable,” Youngkin said.
As much as the governor has talked about the state’s migration patterns, he has tied it to tax policies and failed to make Virginia “the best state to live, work, and raise a family.”
“Among the states, there are winners, and there are losers,” he said, “Virginia must be a winner — and it’s up to us to make sure that she is.”
Virginia is a winner, however, and ranked number one for its bond rating. The state has maintained its AAA bond rating since 1938, which is longer than any other state.
And despite its average ranking for its “percentage of adults age 25 and older with a high school diploma or higher” (it ranks 25th), the commonwealth places 6th for its percentage of those same adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher. Though the commission has tracked the former measure, it now records the latter in the report, as it determined it was more directly linked to economic growth.
Virginia also had 10.6% of its population living in poverty in the past 12 months, which seems high but places it in the bottom 25th percentile among the states. Mississippi ranked 1st at 19.1%, and New Hampshire had the lowest poverty rate at 7.2%.
