Atlanta is the core city of the eighth most populous United States metropolitan area at 6,104,803 (est.

Once the nation's 4th largest black-majority city, Atlanta fell below 50% non-Hispanic African American in the 2020 census.

The non-Hispanic African-American population has the largest percentage decline in the city since the 2000 census.

[14] The strongest growth of African Americans in the Atlanta area is in the surrounding suburbs.

Since 2000, Atlanta demographics have drastically changed due to an influx of whites into gentrifying intown neighborhoods, such as East Atlanta and the Old Fourth Ward, coupled with a stronger movement of Blacks into surrounding suburbs, especially in Clayton County and DeKalb County,[17][18][19] an influx of Asians and Hispanics moving into the city, combined with increased identification as mixed race and more children born in interracial marriages.

In the 2009 mayoral race, Mary Norwood lost by just 714 votes (out of over 84,000 cast) to Kasim Reed.

This comes amid the fact that in recent years, an influx of whites, Asians and Hispanics into Atlanta has shifted the demographics in what was once a city guaranteed to elect a black mayor.

This demographic change and its possible historic effect on Atlanta's city government was a factor that, among others, helped draw supporters of both candidates to the polls.

If the city were to capture ten percent of metro Atlanta's growth, it would reach a population of 660,000 people by 2030.

[68] These immigrant communities have altered the economic, cultural, and religious landscape of metro Atlanta.

[70] A Atlanta MSA in 2000 did not include Butts, Dawson, Haralson, Heard, Jasper, Lamar, Meriwether, and Pike counties, whose population totalled in 2000: 135,783; in 2010: 156,368 (2.96% of total new 28-county metro)[71]B Compares the larger 28-county Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta MSA 2010 with a smaller 20-county Atlanta MSA 2000; however the 8 new counties represent less than 3% of the larger 28-county metro.Source: for race and Hispanic population, U.S. Census Bureau 2010 and 2000 census; for foreign-born population: US Census Bureau 2010 and 2000 American Community Surveys; Immigrants in 2010 Metropolitan America, Brookings Institution The 2010 census counted 5,268,860 people in the 28-county metropolitan area.

This represented a proportional increase of 24.0%, again second-highest (after Houston) among the ten largest metropolitan areas of the United States.

White Americans made up 55.4% of metro Atlanta's population, a relative decrease from 63.0% ten years earlier, but still an absolute increase of over 330,000 people.

[73] The Hispanic population is heavily concentrated in the northeastern section of the Atlanta metropolitan Area.

Atlanta has Georgia's largest Bosnian American population with approximately 10,000 in the metro area, mainly in Gwinnett County and DeKalb County[74] The most common reported ancestries in Atlanta were English, American, German, Irish, Italian, Scottish, African, French, Polish, Russian and Dutch.

This was the fourth largest rate of growth among the nation's top 100 metros, after Baltimore, Orlando and Las Vegas.

Out of the top 100 US metros, Atlanta has the 11th highest ratio of the foreign-born living in the suburbs and not in the core city.

[89] Atlanta does not have single centers of ethnic groups such as a Koreatown, but rather areas such as the Buford Highway Corridor in DeKalb County and parts of Gwinnett County are commercial centers for multiple ethnic communities.

[citation needed] In 1990 Greater Atlanta had the largest Japanese population in the Southeast United States.

Of the metropolitan areas in the Southeast United States, in 1990 Greater Atlanta had the most extensive education network for Japanese nationals.

[91] In the Atlanta-Sandy Springs- Marietta, GA area the African foreign born population came from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, South Africa, Somalia, Cameroon Sierra Leone and Togo.

[93] Religion in Atlanta, while historically centered around Protestant Christianity, now involves many faiths as a result of the city and metro area's increasingly international population.

Metro Atlanta also has a considerable number of ethnic Christian congregations, including Korean and Indian churches.

[96] In 2008, approximately 83.3% of the population five years and older spoke only English at home, which is roughly 4,125,000 people.

People who speak an Asian language at home numbered over 137,000 and made up 2.8% of the population.