Kanawha County Leads Population Loss

New U.S. Census Bureau figures show Kanawha County once again led West Virginia in the number of people leaving a county in 2017.
The Gazette-Mail reports that 2,804 people left Kanawha, according to 2017 population estimates. It’s the fifth straight year Kanawha led the state in people leaving a county. Kanawha had the 10th-highest population decrease by individuals of all counties in the nation in 2017 and ranked 19th in 2016. Despite the high number of people leaving, they only made up 1.5 percent of Kanawha’s total population, which sits at an estimated 183,293 people and is the largest in West Virginia.