North Carolina's Hispanic and Asian Populations Keep Growing, Slowing the State's Aging

North Carolina's Hispanic and Asian populations kept growing last year, even as the federal government tightened immigration enforcement, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released last month and first reported by The News & Observer. The growth matters for more than diversity: because both groups are younger on average than the state's white and Black residents, they are helping slow the aging of North Carolina as a whole.

The state's Hispanic population grew by an estimated 30,179 people, or 4.5 percent, in the year ending June 30, 2025. That was slower than the 6.6 percent the year before, and it covers the first six months of the Trump administration's push to close the southern border and deport unauthorized immigrants. Census population estimates do not record legal status, so they capture everyone living in the state regardless of how they arrived. Over the longer run, the Bureau estimates the Asian population has grown 32 percent since 2020, faster than any other racial or ethnic group in North Carolina.

How big these communities are now

Our own reading of the latest American Community Survey puts hard numbers on the size of each group. Of North Carolina's roughly 10.73 million residents, this is the current composition.

Hispanic is an ethnicity that can be of any race, so these figures overlap and do not sum to 100 percent.

North Carolina now has more than 1.2 million Hispanic residents, a group larger than the entire population of some states, and about 351,000 Asian residents. Neither is evenly spread. Both concentrate heavily in the state's two big metros.

Where the Hispanic population is concentrated

Mecklenburg and Wake, the counties anchoring Charlotte and Raleigh, together hold more than 320,000 Hispanic residents, better than a quarter of the state total. The rest of the top of the list traces the Piedmont manufacturing cities, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Durham, where earlier waves of Hispanic migration settled around food processing, construction, and textiles.

Where the Asian population is concentrated

The Asian map is different, and it points squarely at the Research Triangle. Wake County alone counts more than 100,000 Asian residents, nearly a third of the state total, drawn by the technology, research, and university economy around Raleigh, Cary, and Morrisville. That growth is heavily Indian and Chinese, the two largest Asian-origin groups nationally, and it is why the Triangle's suburbs have some of the fastest-diversifying school districts in the Southeast.

Why younger groups keep the state younger

Hispanic and Asian residents skew younger than white and Black North Carolinians, with more children and more working-age adults, so as their share rises they pull against the state's overall aging. The Bureau estimates North Carolina's under-18 population has grown by nearly 53,000 since 2020, which held the rise in the median age to 39.5 years. Even so, the graying continues: residents 65 and older now make up 19 percent of the state, up from 17 percent in 2020, while the under-18 share slipped from 22 to 21 percent.

It is the same story playing out across the fast-growing Southeast. We saw the parallel next door in how Georgia is diversifying, and the national version in which race is increasing the most in the United States. To dig into North Carolina's own numbers, see the full North Carolina data profile or compare any two counties with the compare tool.

Sources

Year-over-year growth, the 32 percent Asian increase since 2020, and the age figures are from U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 population estimates, as reported by The News & Observer. Current population counts and shares by group and county are from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.