[TonyAnderson]

Originally Posted by hudkina

But it is interesting to see just how off the estimates were. The 2009 estimate for Arizona was 6,595,778 yet the official count found only 6,392,017. In 2007 the state had an estimated population of 6,362,241, and despite all indications that the state had seen its population growth slow to a crawl during the recession, the Census Bureau continued to estimate massive population gains over the following two years. Assuming that the estimates for 2007 were remotely accurate, it seems that Arizona has been relatively stagnant during the recession.

It's interesting because the Census Bureau was relatively accurate with (if not underestimating) Nevada. Between 2007 and 2009 they estimated growth of 75,333, or under 38,000 per year. However, after the official count, they found that the 2010 results were 57,466 above the 2009 estimates. Assuming the estimates for 2007 were relatively accurate, Nevada performed slightly better through the recession than the Census Bureau estimated.

Another state with inflated estimates was Georgia. The 2009 estimate had the population at 9,829,211 but the official count found 9,687,653. It seems as if the estimates were looking for a population of roughly 10 million for 2010, but found far fewer.

I'm kind of impressed with how accurate the estimates are considering how they're done. Going from estimating for ten years straight to counting each person individually each ten years seems like you'd have some really eschewed numbers. I think they were off by 20,000 for Utah (of a 500,000 10 year increase). Not bad.