October 1, 2025
These forecasts offer a data-driven foundation for long-range planning, regional coordination, and transportation modeling, ensuring that future investments align with the region’s evolving population and economic landscape.
DVRPC recently released new population and employment forecasts for the nine-county Greater Philadelphia region through the year 2050. Population and job forecasts are important for determining how to use land and where we need to improve access to housing and economic opportunities. These forecasts were developed to support DVRPC’s Update: Connections 2050 Plan for Greater Philadelphia. They revise and replace the previous forecasts adopted in 2021, prior to the release of the 2020 Decennial Census.
Overall, the region is expected to see steady growth in both people and jobs in the coming decades. More people are moving to the DVRPC region. The Greater Philadelphia region is projected to add over 450,000 new residents between 2020 and 2050, representing a nearly 8 percent increase in population, and bringing the total population to over 6.3 million. Most new residents will live in cities, but the fastest growth will happen in the suburbs of Pennsylvania.
Population increase is expected to be more robust in the first half of the forecast period and then taper off after 2035. The forecasts are grounded in historical trends in births, deaths, and migration. While net migration into the region is projected to remain positive, declining birth rates and an aging population are anticipated to slow overall population growth. As a result, the region’s demographic profile will continue to shift older, with the population over age 65 increasing, while the number of residents under 65 remains relatively stable.
More jobs are coming to the DVRPC region as well. Employment is forecasted to increase by more than 350,000 jobs between 2020 and 2050, just over 10 percent. The majority of this increase is expected to occur by 2025, as the labor market rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic and surpasses pre-pandemic employment levels. The fastest growing industries are those related to transportation and warehousing, given more online shopping and larger delivery networks. However, with the working-age population remaining flat through 2050, little to no net employment growth is projected beyond 2025. Despite this, total regional employment is forecasted to approach 4 million by 2050, with a diversified economy supporting various industries.
The forecasts were developed in close partnership with county and regional stakeholders through DVRPC’s Socioeconomic and Land Use Analytics Committee (SLUAC) to reflect both local insight and shared assumptions about demographic and economic change. Together, these forecasts offer a data-driven foundation for long-range planning, regional coordination, and transportation modeling, ensuring that future investments align with the region’s evolving population and economic landscape.
Learn more in the Analytical Data Report, which provides five-year projections from 2020 through 2050 at multiple geographic levels, including the regional, county, municipal, and Philadelphia Planning District scales. Additionally, DVRPC’s online Data Center offers forecasts at the Transportation Analysis Zone (TAZ) level, including projections for households and employment by industry sector.