Fewer people are moving to Vermont from other countries, and state officials are warning that a state with more deaths than births has few other ways to make up the difference.
Vermont gained just over 600 people from abroad between mid-2024 and mid-2025, after subtracting those who left, according to Census Bureau estimates reported by the Valley News. That’s down from more than 1,000 a year in each of the three years before. With deaths outnumbering births, Vermont’s population fell by an estimated 1,858 residents between July 2024 and July 2025, according to Census data compiled by the Joint Fiscal Office.
On Sept. 30, Republican Gov. Phil Scott wrote to President Donald Trump asking him to “increase — and broaden — refugee admissions” in the coming federal fiscal year. Vermont is preparing to receive about 125 refugees, according to the letter, which the governor’s office provided to Compass, but has the capacity “within existing resources” to resettle 250 to 300.
Scott made both a humanitarian case and an economic one. The letter describes refugees as people “fleeing war and persecution” and cites “the very positive contributions refugees are making to our workforce and communities.” He made a similar request in 2020.
The federal government sets the annual refugee ceiling. The Trump administration has sharply cut refugee admissions and is prioritizing white Afrikaners from South Africa, WCAX reported.
“States like Vermont are going to feel problems”
A week after the letter, the state’s top labor economist raised the same issue at a gathering of manufacturers and educators in Brattleboro.
“When you have a change in the federal policy about how many people are coming into this country, states like Vermont are going to feel problems,” Mathew Barewicz, the Department of Labor’s economic and labor market information director, said at the Oct. 8 event, the Brattleboro Reformer reported. Barewicz told the group that 75 percent of Vermont’s population growth over recent decades came from people moving here from abroad.
Asked for the source, Barewicz pointed Compass to a Department of Labor analysis of Census survey data for 2014 through 2023. It shows that people arriving from abroad made up about 72 percent of Vermont’s net gain from migration over that period: 20,776 arrivals from other countries, against a total gain of 28,966 people once moves to and from other states are counted.
That is a share of the gain from migration, not of overall population growth, which was smaller because deaths outnumbered births. The survey can’t count Vermonters who moved to another country, and the department cautions that Vermont’s small sample produces wide margins of error. The state’s Joint Fiscal Office, using a different Census measure for 2020 through 2024, found arrivals from abroad and moves from other states contributing roughly equal amounts, while deaths exceeded births by about 6,800.
The two analyses differ in part because moves from other states swing widely from year to year, while arrivals from abroad have been steadier:
Before the pandemic, Vermont’s total gain from migration averaged just 641 people a year. Arrivals from abroad averaged about 2,300 a year over the decade, which suggests more people were leaving for other states than arriving from them.
From 2021 through 2023, Vermont gained an average of 8,374 people a year from migration as people moved here during and after the pandemic.
Between 2024 and 2025, more Americans left Vermont than moved here, and arrivals from abroad fell by about half.
What the administration says
Lyle Jepson, the state’s commissioner of economic development, said in an email to Compass that keeping high school and college graduates in Vermont is essential for businesses trying to fill open jobs.
“Clearly, in migration is needed,” Jepson wrote. That includes people moving from other states as well as from abroad. He pointed to the governor’s refugee letter as “one opportunity that could support our communities and economy.”
Jepson cited an estimate from the Vermont Futures Project, a research group affiliated with the Vermont Chamber of Commerce that advocates growing the state’s population. The group estimates Vermont needs to add about 13,500 people to its workforce each year over the next decade to replace retiring workers, offset people leaving the state and support business growth.
The Department of Labor said in an email to Compass that it has not projected Vermont’s labor force under lower immigration.
The scale
The figures don’t measure the same thing — the first counts workers, the others count people of all ages — but they show the difference in scale:
The Futures Project estimates Vermont needs to add 13,500 workers a year over the next decade.
Net arrivals from abroad last year: just over 600.
The governor’s request would bring 125 to 175 more refugees than the state currently expects.