America’s urban populations are on the rise:
New Census data released Thursday further suggests that within the last year (from July 1, 2012, to July 1, 2013), virtually all of the country’s population growth took place in metropolitan areas, with a significant chunk of it even further clustered in and around the largest cities. Over that year, the number of people living in metropolitan America increased by 2.3 million, a figure that reflects both natural growth and in-migration. The population in what the Census calls “micropolitan statistical areas” – smaller population centers with a core of fewer than 50,000 people – grew by a mere 8,000 souls. As for the rest of the mostly rural country, the population there dropped between 2012 and 2013 by 35,000 people. Those areas are neither attracting new residents nor producing many of their own, a sign of the exodus of young adults who might be having their own children now.
But, as Ben Casselman notes, some cities have been more fortunate than others:
Eighteen US metro areas had unemployment rates of 12 percent or higher in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and all but three of them saw a net decline in migration – that is, they saw more people move out than move in. These cities are overwhelmingly in inland California, where the collapse of the housing bubble left deep and lasting scars. … Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the spectrum, cities in regions with strong job markets are gaining residents. Oil and gas states dominated the list of fastest-growing cities: Six of the top 10 were in Texas, North Dakota or Wyoming, where an oil and gas boom has brought unemployment rates below 5 percent.
Meanwhile, geographer Jim Russell reminds readers that population decline doesn’t have to signal doom:
[The conventional wisdom is that] negative net migration is bad, always bad. To say otherwise makes you a blind civic cheerleader guilty of moving the goalposts in order to gild a turd. Pittsburgh is dying. Seriously, how could outmigration be a good thing? That means 10,000 more people left than arrived. Almost certainly, people did move to a dying city. In this case, 20,000 young adults with college degrees moved into the urban core. Meanwhile, 30,000 suburban residents without a high school diploma retired and moved to Phoenix. The workforce grows and gets younger. The workforce gets smarter and per capita income increases. … Just because the net migration number is negative doesn’t mean there is brain drain. A shrinking population doesn’t always indicate a dying city.
The Dish 