[StBernard] Population Update to July 1, 2009

Westley Annis Westley at da-parish.com
Wed Dec 23 20:42:15 EST 2009


Population Update (No. 1-Decemer 22, 2009)

Providing Demographic Data to Louisiana Decision Makers for Strategic
Planning



2009 Louisiana Net Migration in National and Historical Context



Troy C. Blanchard, Louisiana State University

Karen Paterson, Division of Administration



Executive Summary



. From July 1, 2008 to July 1, 2009, Louisiana gained 18,123
residents through positive net migration (i.e. more moved into the state
than moved out).



. This is the first time we have had consistent positive net
migration since 1981.



. The migration we are seeing is not a result of post Katrina
repopulation and is likely due to our favorable unemployment rate relative
to the rest of the country. The unemployment rate in Louisiana for 2008 was
4.6% which is 1.2% lower than the nation rate of 5.8%.



. Because of our favorable migration, we are ~5,000 people away from
our pre-Katrina population and should be at Pre-Katrina levels before July
1, 2010.



. For the decade, Louisiana leads the nation in migration based
population loss (negative net migration largely due to Katrina).



. The net migration between 2005-2009 is not unprecedented for
Louisiana. Between 1985 and 1990, Louisiana lost between 250,000-300,000
residents to negative net migration. Louisiana's 1985 population was
4,408,118 and we did not cross the 4.4 million threshold again until 1997.




. Despite the favorable migration trends, we will still likely lose
national representation during the redistricting in 2010.



. Though we do not know much about those who moved to Louisiana
between 2008 and 2008, data on the 2007-2008 migration stream indicate that
we are losing persons with Bachelor's and Graduate degrees and gaining
people with Associate's degrees, some college, high school diploma's only,
and people not completing high school. Also, the household income of
inmigrants is lower than that of the outmigrants.










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