Educational Attainment - Graduate or Professional Degree
New 2023 Demographic Data Analyzed for the Five Largest Northern Virginia Jurisdictions
The NOVA Region Dashboard’s demographics on income, poverty, educational attainment, and the foreign born population have been updated with the new 2023 American Community Survey one-year data released September 12 by the U.S. Census Bureau. View this data to stay informed and for insights on current demographic conditions and trends.
Check back on or after December 12th, for the 2023 American Community Survey five-year data analysis of all Northern Virginia jurisdictions.
Over the coming days, NVRC will be issuing a series of four blogs on the data highlights and insights of this new 2023 demographic data. The first in the series follows.
Northern Virginia localities are home to some of the most highly educated residents in the nation.
This high education level of the region's citizens creates a strong, flourishing business community. In 2023, out of the 843 jurisdictions with a population of 65,000 or more in the USA, four of the 25 highest ranked for the percentage of residents age 25 or more with graduate or professional degrees are located in Northern Virginia. Those include Arlington (1st), the City of Alexandria (5th), Fairfax (8th), and Loudoun (21st).
Northern Virginia, as defined for this analysis using the region's five largest jurisdictions, trended upward in the share of the population holding graduate or professional degrees, increasing from an estimated 25.4% in 2010 to a peak of 30.8% in 2022, and then there was a decline to 30.1% in 2023. The decline from 2022 to 2023 was a statistically significant difference when accounting for the survey's margin of error. This may be due to the wave of retirement occurring in the region and because the remote-work trend has led moderate and high-income, highly educated office workers to migrate out of the region to places that have a more affordable cost of living.
It is notable that all of the region's five largest jurisdictions also trended upward from 2010 to 2022 in the percentage with a graduate or professional degree. However, from 2022 to 2023 all jurisdictions did decline in the share of the population with graduate or professional degrees.
About the Northern Virginia Regional Commission
NVRC is a consortium of thirteen local governments representing more than 2.5 million residents. While only 3% of Virginia's land mass, Northern Virginia has a GDP of $276 Billion which is 41.6% of the GDP of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Northern Virginia’s GDP is larger than 24 states and the District of Columbia and if a country would be the 48th largest economy in the world.