Slower Growth Predicted for Minnesota Population in the 2020s

Minnesota state demographers predict that the state’s population will grow 6.6% in the 2020s from today’s 5.6 million to 5.9 million at the end of the decade. That is less than the 7.2% growth in the 2010s. Moreover, only the seven-county metro area will experience population growth while the state’s other 80 counties will have population declines; this pattern also is expected to continue into the 2030s and 2040s.[1]

This development will squeeze the state’s economy, especially as “the last baby boomers retire in this decade” and as the state’s labor force “will essentially stop growing in the first five years” of the upcoming decade. These effects already are being felt in Minnesota. “Job vacancies have outnumbered the unemployed in Minnesota for two years. Businesses, governments and ordinary people find it’s harder to get things done. Hiring is especially challenging at restaurants, factories, schools and hospitals. Things aren’t delivered on time.”

These developments are especially difficult for small towns in the state. One example is Clarks Grove, a town on Interstate 35 in the southern part of the state. Its population in 2010 was 706, down from 734 10 years earlier. Its school closed in the mid-1980s; its co-op dairy creamery, in 1996; its fire station was destroyed by a tornado in 2017 and a new one reopened in February 2019 after a struggle over insurance coverage, high replacement cost and draining the town’s rainy-day fund.

Another strategy to confront these demographic trends was adopted by Minneapolis’ Augsburg University. It realized that “the fastest-growing group of prospective college students was in immigrant communities around the Twin Cities. They began chasing them. . . . This fall, 65% of its first-year students were persons of color. Undergraduate enrollment was 2,153, up 11% from fall 2014.” This was helped by adding “some new majors, such as music business and graphic design, and sports, such as women’s lacrosse and women’s wrestling.”

Conclusion

These demographic facts are not unique to Minnesota. As the StarTribune article points out, “U.S. population is expected to grow 6.6% in the 2020s, a slide from 7.5% growth this decade” and “urban and rural areas across the country will divide further in the deceleration.”

This broader point was made in the Wall Street Journal. While very pleased with the continued strength of the U.S. economy and labor market, the Journal points out that “this bright cyclical picture for the labor market is on a collision course with a dimming demographic outlook. While jobs are growing faster than expected, population is growing more slowly. In July of last year, the U.S. population stood at 327 million, 2.1 million fewer than the Census Bureau predicted in 2014 and 7.8 million fewer than it predicted in 2008. (Figures for 2019 will be released at the end of the month.)”[2]

The slow growth of U.S. population is due to several factors, said the Journal. First, the “U.S. fertility rate—the number of children each woman can be expected to have over her lifetime—has dropped from 2.1 in 2007 to 1.7 in 2018, the lowest on record. From 2010 through 2018, there were 3 million fewer births than the Census Bureau had projected in 2008.” Second, “[d]eath rates, already rising because the population is older, have been pressured further by “deaths of despair”—suicide, drug overdoses and alcohol-related illness.” This is 171,000 more deaths than the mentioned Census Bureau projection. Third, U.S. immigration “has been trending flat to lower” and is subject to anti-immigration policies of the Trump Administration.

As has been argued in other posts in this blog, this demographic reality should cause U.S. citizens and government leaders to recognize that the U.S. needs more, not less, immigration.[3] This issue is especially timely in light of the Trump Administration’s recent reduction of the U.S. quota for refugee admissions to 18,000 for Fiscal 2020 and the imposition of a new requirement for state and local governments to provide written consents to resettlement of refugees, as has been discussed in other posts[4] as well as others to come in the near future.

Addition: On December 30, the U.S. Census Bureau issued its official population estimates for 2019 showing, as expected, a slowdown in overall growth of population and reduced population in 10 states: New York, Illinois, West Virginia, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, Hawaii, New Jersey, Alaska and Vermont.

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[1] Ramstad, Life in the 2020s: Slower growth will be the new normal in Minnesota, StarTribune (Dec. 29, 2019).

[2] Ip, The Demographic Threat to America’s Job Boom, W.S.J. (Dec. 18, 2019).

[3] See these posts in dwkcommentaries.com: Outstate Minnesota Newspaper Stresses Need for Immigrants (July 27, 2018); State of Minnesota Faces Increasing Shortage of Workers (Dec. 13, 2018); Rural Minnesota Endeavoring To Attract Younger People, dwkcommentaries.com (Sept. 2, 2019); Minnesota Facing Slowdown in Labor Force Growth, dwkcommentaries.com (September 3, 2019); Minnesota’s Challenges of Declining, Aging Population, dwkcommentaries.com (Oct. 2, 2019).

[4]  See the following posts to dwkcommentaries.com: U.S. Sets 18,000 Quota for New Refugee Admissions to U.S. for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 4, 2019); U.S. Senators Oppose U.S. Reduction in Refugee Admissions for Fiscal 2020 (Nov. 11, 2019); Latest U.S. Struggle Over Refugees (Dec. 11, 2019); Minnesota and Minneapolis Say “Yes” to Refugees (Dec. 14, 2019); Update on States’ Consents to Refugees Resettlement (Dec. 16,2019); Tennessee Consents to Refugees Resettlement (Dec. 20, 2019). See also Global Refugee Forum, dwkcommentaries.com (Dec. 28, 2019).