Population Movement Within Idaho Slows in 2008

Idaho counties lost less population to migration in 2008 than in any other year since the 2001 recession, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates. 

Idaho’s county population estimates show that from mid-2007 to mid-2008, only 15 counties saw a combined total of 1,100 more people move out than move in. That compared to 19 counties seeing a total of nearly 1,600 more people move out than move in between mid-2006 and mid-2007, 12 months that captured one of the state’s strongest economic periods in decades. Since then, the state economy has slowed significantly with unemployment rising and home values falling.

The current national recession began in December 2007, one month after Idaho’s nonfarm payrolls hit their high point of over 658,000. Payrolls had dropped below 630,000 by this January.

Overall, Idaho’s population grew by nearly 28,000 from mid-2007 to mid-2008, or more than 1.8 percent. Barely half that growth was the result of people moving in from other states or countries. That was the smallest share of total population growth credited to in-migration since 2002.

During the 2001 recession and the following year, Idaho’s economy stalled but did not sustain an actual loss of jobs like most other states. While in-migration on the state level slipped to match natural population growth – births exceeding deaths – 26 counties reported more people moving out than moving in. The total was nearly 4,100. In 2002, outmigration totaled 3,500 in 22 counties even though the economy was still trying to break out of the slowdown.

Another indicator that people were moving less in 2008 was the fact that 24 of Idaho’s 44 counties reported a larger share of their annual population change in natural growth rather than migration. During the peak of Idaho’s economic expansion in the mid-2000s, 19 mostly rural counties reported natural growth exceeding migration on population change.

Eastern Idaho’s Teton County, which has attracted significant publicity for its quality of life, posted the largest annual population gain at 6.5 percent although total population remained below 9,000. Jefferson County, a growing part of the Idaho Falls metropolitan area, was second at 4.8 percent and Canyon County was third at nearly 3 percent. With the growth it experienced in 2008, Canyon County’s 40 percent increase in population since the 2000 census ranked 42nd among the nation’s counties with over 10,000 population.

Only nine other counties had growth rates higher than the statewide rate.

Seven counties lost population. The largest decline was just 0.8 percent in Bear Lake County and 0.7 percent in Valley County, which has been hit hard by the shutdown of the Tamarack Resort.

But that was up from the five counties that lost population between mid-2006 and mid-2007, ending a string of annual declines in the number of counties posting population losses since the 2001 recession.