2015 United States Census Population Estimates for PCSAs (disasters, rates, places)
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Chicago's numbers are painful to look at. If anything, I hope we're losing people who don't contribute as much and gaining young professionals, even if we're at a net population loss. I just hope we can stop the bleeding and turn it around soon.
Well it's still up from 2010, it's just down 0.0003% from 2014 to 2015. I'm actually fine with the pause recently in population growth as long as the metro area keeps creating jobs like it did last year. Jobs were up over 50,000, which isn't stellar, but it's needed at a time when the population is stagnant.
Jobs are where they were around 10 years ago and the population is where it was around 10 years ago, so basically it's a "lost decade" for the region, but while it's not growth, it's not decline. Yet. Which is important to stress.
The metro area is still in transition, with the blue collar jobs vanishing and being replaced by white collar jobs. The problem is the population isn't exactly setup for that ratio of jobs. The areas of Chicago hurting the most are the west and south sides of the city along with the south suburbs.
I believe that's where you see the greatest population loss. From 2000 to 2010 the city of Chicago lost 180,000 black people, and not all to the suburbs. That represented a full 80% of the population loss.
Even more striking is that 115,000 of those blacks the city lost were under the age of 18. To have a full 58% of the population loss be such a finite group as blacks under the age of 18 is strange. The adult population didn't change much, with the other big group losing being elderly white people, and they were backfilled by a growth of around 40,000 whites in their 20's.
Downstate Illinois is certainly doing MUCH worse than the Chicago area, which I think is masking the real impacts to the state because of its size.
Chicago's job growth since 2009: 377,000
Illinois's job growth since 2009: 390,000
Chicago was 97% of the state's job growth while only having 70% of the state's population.
Chicago has 10,000 more jobs than it's previous all-time high and 40,000 more than it did before the recession.
Illinois has 65,000 fewer jobs than its previous all-time high and is still 10,000 short of where it was before the recession.
So while Chicago is at least recovering, downstate is actually still down by 75,000 jobs from peak.
The budget for the state isn't finished and the city and state pension issues are still a mess. THIS is what's really holding back the state and the city right now. I'm at least confident that when they FINALLLY get the budget fixed and put forth a real solution to the pension issues, the state and city will move on and things will pick back up. Right now much of the state is in a very damaging holding pattern because of the finances, and it's causing a lot of people to stress out and jump ship.
What's odd is the crazy building boom still going on downtown Chicago and on the north side. It's like gangbusters in many areas of the north lakefront and especially downtown with over 40 highrises under construction and many more announced each week.
Also the huge influx of corporations and jobs to downtown Chicago. Headquarters and offices have come by the dozen, hence the huge building boom and population explosion. Jobs in the city of Chicago are now at their highest since the year 2000. Jobs downtown are at an all-time high. CTA rail ridership is at an all time high. Much of this at the expense of the suburbs.
The downtown area is carrying the rest of the metro area at this point. It's a strange beast.
I did the Bay Area and its amazing that 9 of the 10 fastest growing counties in California are either in the Bay Area or border the Bay Area.
Kudos to SF City, which hit 864,816 in 2015.
Also, the SF MSA has grown by 300,000+ since 2010 which is amazing--5 million doesnt seem that far away anymore.
Anyhow, Bay Area CSA
2015 Population: 8,713,914
2014 Population: 8,607,423
2014-2015 Numerical Change: +106,491
2014-2015 Percent Growth: +1.231%
Yeah, the San Francisco Bay Area has become a resident member of the 100,000+ a year group. Currently at the PCSA level, there are only 4 members, maybe 5 or 6 (still waiting for the census bureau to release the CSA numbers today which would shed light on Atlanta and New York CSAs).
The 4 are; Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area at over 100,000 a year or higher. Basically the same 4 as last year, though still waiting for CSA numbers to officially be released to see where New York and Atlanta ended up overall. New York's done 100,000 a year every year this decade except the last two, but its come extremely close to 100,000 even in these two years.
Chicago's (city and metro) population decline is hardly surprising, given the city and state's economic challenges. Cook County has the largest population loss of any U.S. county, beating out Wayne County (Detroit).
Illinois has greater population loss than the rest of the Midwest combined, and the vast majority of that population is in the Chicago metro. There are serious structural problems in that city/state.
Chicago's (city and metro) population decline is hardly surprising, given the city and state's economic challenges. Cook County has the largest population loss of any U.S. county, beating out Wayne County (Detroit).
Illinois has greater population loss than the rest of the Midwest combined, and the vast majority of that population is in the Chicago metro. There are serious structural problems in that city/state.
The city hasn't shown a decline yet, but I believe with the violence on the south/west sides this year, it's going to. Those neighborhoods are mostly black, and the black population of Chicago was the only one showing declines up through 2014.
The black/white growth rates have flipped from where they were 1960 through around 1995:
Whites are actually the largest race in the city once again, with Hispanics looking to overtake blacks by 2020 at this point. As recently as 1990 there were 250,000 more blacks in the city than there are today.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. Historically the black and white segments were by far the largest political groups in the city.
Given this years explosion of violence, which is mostly in those black communities, I would expect the black population to decline even further. This is very devastating for those areas to lose their economic backbone.
Actually I said natural increase + immigration together but yeah, the region doesn't really need domestic migration to hit 6 figures in population growth annually.
Anyways, I actually made this thread about more than just Houston. So if you don't mind, I'm going to plug out of this Houston conversation. Really weird to me how a city that didn't cross any benchmarks or surpass another city in its estimates is being talked about in such pronounced manner in this thread.
I mean the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex MSA actually surpassed a benchmark, crossing 7 million but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston instead. I mean the Miami/Fort Lauderdale MSA surpassed a benchmark, crossing 6 million but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston instead. I mean the Washington DC MSA surpassed a city to go from 7th to 6th in its national rankings, but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston. I mean, the Denver MSA just went from 21st to 19th, hopping over two legacy cities in the process, but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston. The Austin area surpassed 2 places AND also crossed the 2 million benchmark but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston. The Raleigh area moved above 2 places, but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston. The Chicago area actually posted a loss, whereas the Detroit area posted a slight gain, but no, all anyone wants to do is talk about Houston.
Houston, Houston, Houston, Houston. That's all I see in this thread. There's like 59 other places in America over 1 million at the PCSA level and we fixate and only talk about Houston?
I'm unplugging from the Houston talk. Too much Houston. All I have to say is that if you realize what the drivers to population growth are for every city then none of these numbers will come as a surprise. Its only a surprise when you apply expectations that you have for your city in your state to every city in every state and things start coming out higher or lower from those expectations. Basically people writing their own narratives and disregarding the facts presented to them.
Here are some I've ran the numbers too. I'm going to do a much more comprehensive and detailed post in a few hours with more cities and detail but here's some preliminary information though.
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) Total Population Change April 2010 - July 2015 (5-Years, 3 Months):
- Houston MSA: + 736,531
- Dallas/Fort Worth MSA: + 676,582
- New York MSA: + 614,895
- Los Angeles MSA: + 511,231
- Washington DC MSA + 461,452
- Miami/Fort Lauderdale MSA: + 447,696
- Atlanta MSA: + 424,067
- Phoenix MSA: + 381,644
- San Francisco/Oakland MSA: + 320,741
- Seattle MSA: + 293,771
- Riverside/San Bernardino MSA: + 264,308
- Boston MSA: + 221,919
- San Diego MSA: + 204,208
- Tampa MSA: + 191,982
- Minneapolis/Saint Paul MSA: + 175,724
- Philadelphia MSA: + 104,532
- Chicago MSA: + 89,926
- Detroit MSA: + 5,793
I thought it was already debunked that the types of blacks leaving Chicago are low-income, poverty stricken. It's middle class blacks who are leaving with their families. The poorest and most crime-prone are the ones staying. That's why the murder rate in those areas have pretty much gone up in recent years. This only means the income disparity between blacks and whites/Asian in Chicago in that city will only get worse since the blacks who do make good money are leaving for Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta.
A lot of people in Chicago are playing mental gymnastics saying "Well, it's the bad blacks who commit crime and don't pay taxes who are leaving and being replaced by upper class whites". No, they're not. How can they leave when they're broke? That's why the hood exists in the first place because these people usually can't get out. It's not that simple. This will only continue to fuel anger and social issues in the city because the income disparity gets worse and worse. The middle class black neighborhoods in South Chicago are dying and yes, they exist.
But then again, Chicago is a pretty racist city so I wouldn't be surprised if people are not differentiating the middle and lower class blacks anyway. "They're all the same nonetheless". You can see it on this thread and you can see it on the Chicago forum.
I don't care if the types of people leaving Chicago are poor anyway. A world class city like Chicago should NEVER be posting population losses. This basically means immigration is not high enough to offset the losses which is terrible. Why is it that New York can still post decent population growth even with net outgoing domestic migration? Because of immigration.
You will never see a population loss for metro areas like London, NYC, Paris, Los Angeles and the likes.
I've looked at the components of Houston's population growth numerous times, so it is never been a surprise to me to see it over 100,000 even with the oil bust in full force. It gets 100,000 people just off newborn babies and immigrants resettling from refugee stricken areas of the world.
I never expected an acceleration though. I expected a minor cool-down, because while domestic migration in Houston would go down, I expected its immigration to go up. Houston for the last 8 years has actually been getting more Central American immigrants than Mexican immigrants, primarily due to Central America falling apart and becoming an extremely violent and unlivable place in the world. Which has led to a mass of refugee resettlement into Houston in particular. Last year Houston added 63,000 people who were Central American of its total 156,000 people it added. To put into perspective and each year that grows. This population growth doesn't really correspond with economy, so I always expected Houston to be north of 125,000 people per year.
What I didn't expect was an acceleration but I do expect it to cool-down for 2016 though. I think it will come down to 130,000 a year (maybe even 125,000 a year), obviously a very steep slowdown (as it shaves nearly 35,000 - 40,000 a year) but for Houston that cool-down is what it did in decades past as a boom.
Houston and Atlanta are two different types of cities when it comes to population growth. Their growth drivers are very different. Atlanta has always been a migrant destination within the United States and the recession had capped some of that, which is why when its economy took a hit, so did its population growth. Houston's population growth is fed largely off the tandem of natural increase and immigration, with domestic migration a much further back component. Until the recent 2-3 years of the post-recession oil boom, Houston was never a major domestic migrant destination for a Sunbelt city. It was just an average one. Atlanta's growth drivers are domestic migrants from the Northeastern United States, Midwestern United States, Southeastern United States, and Florida and then followed more distantly by natural increase and immigration.
Thank you for putting forth much of what I have known or suspected about the differences in the growth drivers between metros such as Atlanta & Houston which you have specifically analyzed here.
I prefer this type of analysis to hyperbole any day. Unfortunately hyperbole is what you get in typical media analysis of almost anything which leads to misunderstanding of what drives this or that.
Unfortunately, hyperbole also shows up here on C.D. Yes, I know... that's shocking!
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2015 United States Census
