The only metro Atlanta counties with populations that grew larger than Cobb this past year were Fulton and Gwinnett, according to Atlanta Regional Commission data released Thursday.
From 2016 to 2017, Cobb gained 12,800 new residents, putting the estimated population at 750,300, the ARC said.
Fulton had the largest increase with 17,100 residents and Gwinnett gained 16,900 new folks. DeKalb County — the fourth largest county in Georgia — grew by nearly 9,000.
For comparison, the City of Atlanta added 9,900 locals — the largest single-year estimated population increase since the Great Recession, the ARC said.
“The Atlanta region was slow to emerge from the recession, but strong growth in the past few years shows that our recovery has taken hold,” said Mike Carnathan, manager of ARC’s research and analytics group. “People are moving here because jobs are plentiful to a wide variety of job seekers.”
Between 2010 and 2017, Cobb’s neighbor to the north Cherokee County grew in population by 15 percent, which is the fastest in the region.
Atlanta’s 29-county metro added more than 87,000 jobs between April 2016 and April 2017 — second in the nation to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
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