POPULATION GROWTH
The population in Hays County is exploding. For several years now, the county has been in the top ten fastest growing counties in the nation. For the 2022 to 2023 data, it was bumped to the 16th fastest growing in the nation, but that’s not due to any slowdown in the quickly growing population. According to the Texas State Demographer Lloyd Potter, this just means that there are other counties in the U.S. that are growing even faster than Hays.
“If you look from year to year there’s a slight fluctuation in its dynamics, in particular domestic migration, but it kind of goes up and down just a little bit. But it’s still pretty solid. I’m not seeing anything very dramatic there in terms of its change,” Potter said. “The only reason it might change its rank is because other counties are growing faster. It may not be that Hays County’s percent change is really changing that much … again it will fluctuate up and down a little bit from year to year, but I don’t see anything changing really dramatically in Hays County.”
The main factors that go into calculating population are migration, births and deaths, and Potter said all of them are estimates. Births and Deaths data come from vital statistics, which are from the Department of State Health Services. He said that data is very accurate, but migration data is a little less so. Migration estimates come from data from the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service. The IRS produces a document that shows where people filed their taxes the most recent year and the year before that. He said those that filed their taxes in a different county from one year to the next are considered a “migrant.”
Potter said from 2022 to 2023, there were 1,624 people added to the population of Hays County due to “natural change,” so there were more births than deaths. Specifically, there were a little more than 3,072 births and 1,448 deaths.
Potter said the range of domestic migration (people migrating into the county from anywhere else in the country) has been consistently around 9,000 people a year, including from 2022 to 2023. He said total migration was around 10,000 people for the same time period.
“It still is an attractive place, and people are moving there,” Potter said. “I don’t expect that to really change moving forward. What we do see in places like Hays County is eventually you’ll build out, so you’ll have relatively fewer parcels available for residential building. And then of course that will increase the property values because of the supply and demand of that. But then with that we’ll see migration flowing then you’ll see all of those people that moved there looking for houses for their families. They’re families are growing, so you’ll start seeing a shift toward increases in population that are being driven more from natural increase, which is births minus deaths.”
Potter said that ten years ago more than 90% of the population change was from migration. From 2022 to 2023, 80% of the population change was from migration.
“That’s happening at the same time that we’re seeing an increase in the proportion of growth that's happening from more births than deaths,” Potter said. “The pattern is nothing that I would say is surprising. There’s over 3,000 counties in the country like 3,200-something, and being the 16th fastest growing is — well, I would argue that it’s not a great place to be because when you’re growing fast it creates a lot of challenges for infrastructure development and for ensuring that all of the services [like] fire and police, schools, all that …. are adequate for the population. Rapid growth sometimes can be a real challenge for politicians, because they’re struggling to keep up with infrastructure. With that said, so far I can see Hays County seems to be doing well so far from my observations.”
Potter said between 2022 and 2023, Hays County grew at a rate of 4.2%, and the state of Texas grew at a rate of 1.5%. From 2021 to 2022, Hays County grew at a rate of 5.1%.
“Many of the people that are moving to what I refer to as suburban ring counties, which Hays County would fall into, many of them are coming from other states, so we certainly have significant flows from states like California, Illinois, New York. Those are some of the really big centers, actually Florida and Louisiana are pretty big centers as well,” Potter said. “I think it was 75 counties this last year that lost part of their population. Part of their losing population is young people are moving from rural counties into the urban areas, and I’m guessing some of those are landing in Hays County as well.”
Potter said that big changes occurred for Travis County in 2023 with an increase in people migrating out of it, which likely has increased the population in Hays County.
“In some ways, that is a factor that will even further facilitate additional growth in Hays County as we go forward. People are moving out of Travis County, and they’re moving, many of them, to the surrounding counties,” Potter said. “A lot of the people in Travis County as they enter their reproductive years and have kids, and then they’re wanting to find a house — something that they can afford — and better schools. They’re certainly looking to the San Marcos area and Hays County … A lot of amenities that are associated with a place like Hays County in terms of quality of schools, quality of life and so on that Travis County is struggling with a little bit in terms of maintaining affordability and obviously that is associated with quality of life.”
Potter said he doesn’t anticipate the population growth in Hays County to slow down anytime soon.
