On April 1, 2020 — but not known for more than 14 months later — Dallas County’s official population was 99,678.
It was a temporary snapshot before vaulting a threshold.
Last week, the Census Bureau released its 2021 population estimates for U.S. counties. This is the third stage in the yearly sets of estimates (state, metro, county, city) of the previous fiscal year.
According to these numbers — and seen earlier in the July 2020 estimates that were released last October — Dallas County reached 100,000 within three months of the census, and is above 103,000 now.
Dallas County is adding nearly 10 people a day. In fiscal 2021, the county is estimated to have added 3,310 people, or 9.56/day. That’s nearly the entire population of Iowa’s smallest county, Adams, moving there in 12 months. At that rate, Dallas will displace Woodbury as Iowa’s sixth-largest county in the next estimate.
Dallas County’s addition is also greater than Iowa’s increase in the same time period, indicating losses across rural parts of the state. Iowa was surpassed by Utah in the 2019 estimates, and officially in 2020 (and I just about called it). It is more astounding/depressing when you factor in that the Beehive State is doing it in half the space of the Tall Corn State given that two-thirds of the former is federally owned land.