Hundreds of thousands of Americans moved South this year, fueling a boom in population for a region that’s already the largest and fastest-growing in the United States.

The South added nearly 1.8 million people in total in 2024, including an influx of more than 1.1 million people who moved from abroad.

With a total population of nearly 133 million people, roughly 39% of Americans now live in the South, a 17-state region defined by the Census as stretching from Texas over to Florida and up to Maryland.

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While the South benefitted from international migration, it also stood out as the biggest destination for American movers. It was the only region to see net population gain from domestic migration, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Bustling states like Texas and Florida added gas to the South’s fire, but they weren’t the only reasons for its growth. Six of the 10 fastest growing states in the nation (including the District of Columbia) are Southern.

North and South Carolina each saw huge net gains in domestic migration. That means more Americans moved into those states than Carolinians who moved away.

North Carolina gained more than 82,000 people, second in the country behind only Texas. South Carolina was third in the nation with a net gain of 68,000 from American newcomers. Both beat out Florida, often near the top destinations for American migrants, which was fourth with a net gain of 64,000 people.

All of the top five states for net population gain from migration within the United States were in the South, and seven of the top 10. That includes Alabama, which gained around 26,000 people through domestic migration, and another 16,000 from international migration. Those figures were more than enough to offset the fact that Alabama, for the fourth year in a row, saw more deaths than births.

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Alabama is one of 17 states to lose population through natural change. It’s a sign that the state, and some others, may still have yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Alabama had never seen more deaths than births in modern history until it did so in 2020.

Overall, Alabama still managed to grow this year, adding roughly 40,000 people, a growth rate of 0.8%. As of July 1, 2024, the Census Bureau estimated Alabama was home to 5,157,699 people.

Almost every state in the nation grew in 2024, but while the South grew like kudzu, it was also home to two of the three states that lost people. Both Mississippi and West Virginia shrank last year, along with Vermont in the northeast. Though the population loss in each of those states was small.

International migration fueled growth everywhere in the nation last year, leading to an overall growth rate of 1% for the United States as a whole, the fastest annual growth since 2001, and a sharp turn from the nation’s record low growth of 0.2% just three years ago.

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Ramsey Archibald is an award winning data reporter and editor at al.com. To read more Alabama data stories, click here. Have an idea for an Alabama data story? Email [email protected] or follow him on Twitter and Bluesky.