Boyd Center Projects Tennessee population to reach 8.1M by 2040

Tennessee State Data Center

New projections show Tennessee crossing the 8-million-person mark sooner than previous forecasts predicted following robust growth earlier in the decade.

The next big round number for Tennessee is 8 million residents, and it’s coming into view a little sooner than earlier predictions suggested.

The state’s population is expected to grow to 8.1 million people by 2040, according to new projections from the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. That’s a few years earlier than prior forecasts and reflects the strength of growth observed from 2020 to 2024 that will go down as the second most expansive start to a decade in the state’s history. Only the 1990s added more population in four years.

The state is projected to add nearly 1.2 million people from 2020 through 2040 – easily maintaining Tennessee’s decades-long trend of adding more than a million people every 20 years that began in 1960.

Figure 1: Tennessee’s population has more than tripled in the last century. It grew from 2.34 million in 1920 to a total of 6.91 million in 2020. It’s projected to grow to nearly 8.1 million residents by 2040

From 2020 to 2030, Tennessee’s overall growth rate is expected to reach 9.9 percent, adding more than 686,000 people. Among all decades in Tennessee, that would represent the second-largest population increase in the state’s history. Beyond 2030, population increases are expected to be lower through the end of the projection horizon. This includes a 6.5 percent increase between 2030 and 2040, or an addition of approximately 491,000 people. For the balance of the projection, running from 2040 to 2070, the growth rate is expected to hover between 5.6 and 5.7 percent each decade (Table 1).

“We saw such a large influx of new residents in the years immediately following the pandemic,” said Matt Harris, Boyd Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and co-author of the new projections. “We are already starting to see that boom taper back to ‘normal’ levels, but it’s still led to faster growth in Tennessee’s population than we would have predicted prior to the pandemic.”

County-level Increases Narrow Through 2040

The projections launch from an unusually high baseline – 2024 was the single-largest year of population increases in the state’s history with over 98,000 new residents. At the county level, that translated into widespread growth at the start of the decade. In 2024, 84 of the state’s 95 counties gained residents from 2023. Unsurprisingly, the number of counties with a population increase is expected to soften through the end of the decade. By 2030, 71 counties in the state are projected to see year-over-year growth, with the total falling to 63 by 2040. That pullback would be roughly in line with the 2010 to 2020 period, when 65 counties added population and 30 lost population (Figures 2 and 3).

• 2024
• 2040

Figure 2: The percent population change of Tennessee counties from 2023-2024 shows that 84 counties added population, with 54 growing by more than 1 percent. (U.S. Census Bureau)
: Population change is projected to be positive in 63 of Tennessee’s 95 counties in 2040, but only eight counties, all in Middle Tennessee, are projected to exceed one percent growth for the year. (Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research)

Growth is also expected to become more geographically concentrated over the projection period. In 2024, 54 counties grew by one percent or more, with gains distributed across Middle and East Tennessee. By 2040, only eight counties are projected to exceed one percent, and the strongest growth is concentrated in the counties surrounding Davidson. Much of West Tennessee outside Shelby County is projected to lose population, while a growing number of East Tennessee counties approach zero growth.

Seniors Growing as a Share of Total Population

Every major age group in Tennessee is projected to add population through 2040, though seniors will see the largest gains. The share of residents aged 65 and older is expected to reach nearly 21 percent of the state’s total population by 2040 – a jump from 18.3 percent in 2024 that represents more than 355,000 additional people.

Among the 65+ age group, growth will be fastest at the upper end of the age cohort. The youngest seniors, aged 65 to 74, grow by just 9.0 percent through 2040, while the 75-to-84 group expands by 38.8 percent and Tennesseans aged 85 and over nearly double, climbing from 128,357 residents to 249,652 (Table 2).

“The share of Tennesseans over age 85 will almost double by 2040, and with that we’ll need to start thinking now about how to accommodate that demographic,” Harris said. “Will there be demands for different types of housing and health care? How will these seniors get to the doctor’s office or the grocery store? Will there be enough working-age people in the right industries to provide care and maintain the tax base to provide those services?”

Tennessee’s younger and working-age populations will grow as well, but at a slower pace than the state’s senior population.

Early-career adults, ages 25 to 44, are the state’s largest age group at 26.4 percent of the population. That group will show a slight gain in share while adding 228,374 people by 2040. The 45 to 64 group follows with an increase of 166,514 people.

Every other age group is projected to shrink as a share of the population while still posting net growth through 2040. The share of the state’s population under age 20 will slip from 24.2 percent to 22.8 percent even as it adds nearly 86,000 people, and the 20 to 24 group is essentially flat, adding fewer than 3,000 people (Table 3 and Figure 4).

Figure 4: At 26.4 percent of Tennessee’s population, early-career adults ages 25 to 44 make up the state’s largest age group. Their share is projected to hold roughly steady through 2040, while the 65 and over group grows by 2.5 percentage points — the largest shift of any age group.