For the first time in decades, Buncombe County’s population declined last year. A total of 277,417 people lived in the county as of July 2025 — about 1,800 fewer people than at the same time the previous year, according to U.S. Census Bureau numbers released last month.
The decline marks a big shift for a county that’s experienced steady, year-after-year growth for more than two decades.
Buncombe County wasn’t alone in losing population. Three other western counties — Mitchell, McDowell and Swain — also saw their population decrease during the same time period. But Buncombe’s decline was the largest by far.
Dr. Mike Cline, the state demographer of North Carolina, said Hurricane Helene is the main culprit, but not just because some residents left after the storm. The usual influx of new residents also went down.
“What happened with Helene is certainly, there was some displacement, but probably most of that impact is from people saying, ‘Oh, we were going to move to Western North Carolina. Helene happened. Well, now we don’t have a place to move to,’” Cline told BPR in an interview Monday.
For years, most counties in Western North Carolina have had more deaths than births. That means the only way for the region to grow is through net migration, both international and domestic.
Even the western counties that did grow after the storm did so at a slower pace than the rest of the state, the latest Census data shows.
“If you look at that whole region, population growth dropped to about half of what it was in 2023 to ‘24,” Cline said. “And then statewide … we saw slower growth even outside of that Western North Carolina region. It's just that there, we’re at about 80% of the previous year's growth.”
Cline said the biggest concern going forward is how many people continue to move to Buncombe and other Western North Carolina counties, many of which are still in the midst of recovery.
“What we’ll be looking for in the long term is how well housing gets rebuilt, how much infrastructure gets rebuilt in that area,” he said.
For those reasons, Cline noted, it’s too early to tell whether Buncombe’s population decline is a long-term trend.
