This North Georgia city is among the fastest-growing in U.S., new Census data shows
Some of the country’s fastest-growing cities and towns are clustered in North Georgia, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday.
Hoschton has grown to about 8,600 residents, up from 6,700 a year ago, making it the state’s fastest-growing city and the seventh-fastest-growing in the nation among places with at least 1,000 residents.
The growth isn’t anything new to residents there: Jackson County, just northwest of Athens, was named the nation’s fourth-fastest-growing county earlier this year, aided by developments over the past decade, including an Amazon distribution center and a $2.6 billion electric-vehicle battery plant that recently laid off a third of its workforce.
And booming Dawson County, an hour’s drive north of Atlanta, added the second-highest number of housing units of any county in the nation, according to estimates.
Closer to Atlanta, Cumming in Forsyth County ranked 12th among the nation’s fastest-growing cities and towns.
Despite social media complaints that “we full," Atlanta ranked 11th among large American cities for numeric population gains, the Census Bureau found. The city added about 8,400 people since last year, bringing the total population to 529,000.
Growth is also happening in coastal Georgia. Among the fastest-growing places were tiny Brooklet in Bulloch County, which ranked number 13 nationally, and Port Wentworth in Chatham County (No. 24).
Across the river from Savannah, Jasper County, S.C., added the largest percentage of housing stock of any county in the nation, according to the new data. The Census Bureau proclaimed it the fastest-growing county in America earlier this year.
In rural Glascock County, the town of Edge Hill retained its title as the smallest in Georgia, though the Census Bureau estimated its population grew by one person to a total of 27.
The state’s second-smallest town, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the Census data, is Rest Haven, a Gwinnett County hamlet that has repeatedly tried — and failed — in its efforts to unincorporate. Rest Haven is now home to 44 residents.
Despite those small gains, Georgia continues to become less rural. The number of cities, towns and consolidated city-county governments with populations of 5,000 or fewer — the Census Bureau’s definition of a “small town” — fell to 387, down from 396 five years earlier.
At the same time, the total number of Georgians living in communities of 5,000 or less dropped below 500,000 in the 2025 data, down to just 496,500.
Those residents now make up just 4% of the state’s 11 million people.
About the Author
Jennifer Peebles is a newsroom data specialist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, helping reporters find and tell stories with government data (and sometimes documents, too).
