Demographics of municipalities: In 2023 big cities gain population

The past year is characterized by positive dynamics in the demographic field. For the consecutive year, the country has a positive migration balance, and natural growth has returned to its pre-pandemic levels, though it remains strongly negative. The review of municipal-level data shows that the reversal of migration affects almost the entire country, with large cities generally managing to increase their population.

Against the backdrop of positive demographic trends recorded nationally, in 2023, the population of almost all municipalities continued to decrease – this happened in 220 of them. However, large cities increased their population, with Sofia’s growth at 0.5% (6.2 thousand people), Plovdiv at 1% (3.1 thousand people), and Varna at 0.7% (2.2 thousand people). The municipality of Nesebar had the highest growth at 13%.

In 2023, the natural population decline in the country was 44 thousand. Expectedly, the largest nominal decreases occurred in large municipalities, with Sofia seeing a drop of -1.9 thousand people, followed by Ruse, Varna, Pernik, and Pleven. This year, only four municipalities had positive natural growth: Tvarditsa, Garmen, Nikolaevo, and Yablanitsa.

Despite the overall improvement in natural growth – resulting from the decrease in mortality in 2023 after the pandemic years – large differences remain between individual municipalities. The number of municipalities with more negative natural growth than -20‰ is 30, and those with less than -10‰ are 118 municipalities, mostly in Northern Bulgaria, especially in the Northwest, as well as in border areas with Serbia. In large cities, a normalization is observed, with the natural growth in the capital at -1.5‰, in Plovdiv at -1.9‰, and in Varna at 2.8‰.

The migration picture is much more varied, with a positive balance of migrants in 188 municipalities, covering a large part of the country. Expectedly, the highest net number of migrants is in Sofia – 8.5 thousand people, followed by Nesebar with 4.9 thousand people, mainly due to the rapid recovery of tourism. With more than 4 thousand people in positive balance are Plovdiv and Varna, and Kardzhali remains a traditional leader in migration. Among the municipalities losing the most population are less economically developed regional centers – Dobrich, Montana, Vidin, Vratsa, Pleven, and Sliven, but this is compensated by small surrounding municipalities, similar to the processes observed around the largest centers in 2020-21.

In terms of mechanical growth, the municipalities with the highest positive migration balance relative to the population in 2023 are small municipalities such as Trekliano (+21%), Nesebar (+18%), and Makresh (+17%). Among the larger cities, the coefficient is 0.7% in Sofia, 1.3% in Plovdiv, and 1.4% in Varna. Several clusters of municipalities with more pronounced negative migration are emerging, near Smolyan, Pleven, Vratsa, and Blagoevgrad.

Demographic processes over the past few years point to a significant slowdown in negative dynamics, mainly driven by positive migration. Equally encouraging is the fact that this is not limited only to large cities and leading centers with the highest wages and standard of living, but affects almost the entire territory of the country.