State population stalls

Among the products being manufactured in fewer numbers during the recession is people.

The Nevada Bureau of Health Statistics, Planning & Emergency Response reports that births are down sharply—12.2 percent over a two-year period.

At the same time, both the Brookings Institution and the Census Bureau are tracking a trend that has slowed Nevada’s population growth—people are not moving around the way they once did.

There is more than one factor at work—people are staying where they are because they can’t afford moves or don’t want to risk an existing job, and Nevada is not the attractive place it used to be. “Migration away from areas stretching from San Francisco to San Diego … has now retrenched as home foreclosures rise and job opportunities diminish in states like Nevada and Arizona,” reported Brookings.

Fifty-five percent fewer people moved out of a state in 2007 and 2008 than in 1999 and 2000, the Census Bureau reports. Until recently, Nevada got more than its share of those emigrants, ranking for most of the last half century as the fastest growing state in the nation. Now it leads the nation in home foreclosures, and the loss of the first ranking is likely related to the gain in the second.