Coal Zoom | West Virginia Coal Country Rapidly Losing Residents

West Virginia Coal Country Rapidly Losing Residents

April 16, 2026 - Sixteen West Virginia counties that are part of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Central Appalachia region saw the largest percentage of population loss from that entire group from the 2020 census to 2025 numbers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Parts of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee make up the Central Appalachia region. The 16 counties in the Mountain State run along the southern coal fields.

In the five years since the 2020 census, those counties have lost 5% of their population. The 30 Kentucky counties averaged 2.5% loss, seven counties in Virginia lost 4% and the seven counties that make up the region in Tennessee actually gained 4%, according to analysis of census data by Jim Branscome of the Kentucky Lantern.

In just the last year, those West Virginia counties lost more than 2,900 residents as deaths exceeded births and another 1,300 because of people moving away. Since the last census, West Virginia has lost nearly 34,000 residents.

The 16 counties in southern West Virginia and their respective population loss. *Courtesy Jim Branscome/Kentucky Lantern*

Branscome did the analysis of these population numbers for an article he published in the Kentucky Lantern. As he noted, “In several deep coal counties, transfer payments now account for more than half of all personal income. The coal economy that once sustained wages, tax bases and local institutions has contracted to a fraction of its former scale, and the federal government’s safety net has moved in to fill the void.”

He concluded that,: “West Virginia’s numbers deserve particular attention as a warning of where Eastern Kentucky’s trajectory leads at scale. McDowell County in southern West Virginia had nearly 100,000 residents in 1950 and now stands at 16,878 — a loss of more than 80% over seven decades. It has declined 11.7% in just the five years since the 2020 census. Not one of West Virginia’s 16 Central Appalachian counties registered population growth over the period. Eastern Kentucky’s deep coal core is following the same arc, at a pace that the Vintage 2025 data confirms is on schedule or ahead of it.

“Across the 60-county region, the combined loss since 2020 is approximately 49,000 people. At that rate, the region reaches the 15 to 20% population loss that state university demographers projected for 2050 by roughly 2040. The projections are not being outrun. They are being confirmed.”