Population Growth by State (2010 to 2015)

[muon2]

lol North Dakota

As someone who spent a night in Williston last year, I'm not surprised. Temporary housing was everywhere and the hotels were full of people using them for long-term stays. The restaurants were packed and everyone seemed to be up by 5 am to head off to work. I don't know long it will last, but the place was booming in 2015.

[muon2]

So people are moving out of the Northeast and midwest and towards the South and the West? Good.

If you look into the data you'll see it's really people moving to big urban areas while rural areas are in decline.

Not entirely. Among metro areas over 1 million Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Hartford, and Rochester (NY) were the only losers from 2014 to 2015. They are also in the NE/Great Lakes area.

[muon2]

So people are moving out of the Northeast and midwest and towards the South and the West? Good.

If you look into the data you'll see it's really people moving to big urban areas while rural areas are in decline.

Not entirely. Among metro areas over 1 million Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Hartford, and Rochester (NY) were the only losers from 2014 to 2015. They are also in the NE/Great Lakes area.

And the accompanying rural areas in those states declined even faster...

In IL the state as a whole lost about 22K people from 2014 to 2015. Cook county lost 10K during the same period or 45% of the total loss of the state. Cook county is only 40.7% of the population of IL, so it is losing at a rate faster than the state as a whole. There were individual rural counties that lost at a higher rate, but their small size meant that Cook was the single largest source of population loss in the state.

[muon2]

So people are moving out of the Northeast and midwest and towards the South and the West? Good.

If you look into the data you'll see it's really people moving to big urban areas while rural areas are in decline.

Not entirely. Among metro areas over 1 million Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Hartford, and Rochester (NY) were the only losers from 2014 to 2015. They are also in the NE/Great Lakes area.

And the accompanying rural areas in those states declined even faster...

In IL the state as a whole lost about 22K people from 2014 to 2015. Cook county lost 10K during the same period or 45% of the total loss of the state. Cook county is only 40.7% of the population of IL, so it is losing at a rate faster than the state as a whole. There were individual rural counties that lost at a higher rate, but their small size meant that Cook was the single largest source of population loss in the state.

That's quite the exception, but it really doesn't hold up very well,  from 2010 to 2015 Cook added 46,000 overall,  it's just the last year 2014 to 2015 that a drop happened.   Meanwhile the numbers from 2010 to 2015 across all of Southern and Central Illinois are almost all in decline.  

Even if you look at the 2014 to 2015 numbers....Cook declined 0.2%,  there are 65 (out of 102) counties that had "higher" percentages of declines.   Cook is definitely not leading the pack when it comes to population decline in Illinois, but the absolute numbers "look" big because Cook itself is so big compared to elsewhere.

I will admit Illinois isn't the best example of what I was talking about, but you are kind of cherry picking data here.

I understand your point, but I'm not cherry picking. I live in NE IL, and the numbers are a political issue here - in part because they are so out of whack compared to comparable states and metro areas.

[muon2]

I project that Clark will be at 74% by 2020 or about 33K under 3/4 the state population. Pahrump was 36K in 2010 so adding just that town would be enough to bring it over 3/4.