Not many surprises. You have to get down in the rank of the 30's before any states switched ranks.
What I found surprising is that the Census had been estimating Georgia's population too high and North Carolina's too low, and neither was able to pass Michigan despite the Census having had each of them passing or nearly passing Michigan for this year. I was fully expecting to see both Georgia and NC pass Michigan this Census.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Onn
Michigan was losing population even before the recession, the auto industry went downhill and people fled.
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Actually, it wasn't. Whatever outmigration was occuring was offset by births and immigration. It was only after the double whammy of both the local recession
and the national recession that births and immigration couldn't keep up with the increasing outmigration.
BTW, it's unfortunate that Michigan's economy didn't start to pick back up until the spring of 2010, which is when the Census began its count. The slow (but very real) recovery isn't going to show in the Census. It's really kind of amazing Michigan didn't register a larger loss considering how many jobs we loss on net; I mean a loss of six-tenths of a percent is kind of benign given the economic chaos. You'd expect with all of the doom and gloom stories for the state over the past two years that we'd lost hundreds of thousands of people on net since 2000.
Some more random facts I found about our situation:
- New York State is the only other big, industrial state to have lost population over a decade during the last century when they lost a statistically significant 3.7% of their population during the 1970's.
- Of the 33 times a state has lost population over a decade since 2010, Michigan's loss ranks as the fifth lowest percent drop.
- This decade is pretty similar to the 80's when Michigan only add 0.4% to its population.