Region records population gain for 2nd year in a row
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For most of the span since the end of World War II, more people have been leaving the Pittsburgh region than flocking to it.
For the second year in a row, that trend has been halted. The relative health of the local economy appears to be a motivator for retaining existing Pittsburghers and creating new ones.
The seven-county metropolitan region attracted 1,430 more people than the number who left it between 2009 and 2010, based on new Internal Revenue Service migration data, according to a report by Christopher Briem, a regional economist for the University of Pittsburgh's University Center for Social and Urban Research.
That followed a positive domestic migration flow (the IRS data does not include international migration patterns) of 1,337 in 2008-09.
Of the past 15 years, those are the only two in which more people were counted moving into Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties than leaving them, Mr. Briem reported.
The only other period he knows of in the past half-century in which the Pittsburgh region showed any positive population flow was the early 1990s, when again the nation was in an economic downturn more severe elsewhere than locally. Later in the 1990s, as many as 9,000 more people annually were moving out than in.
Much of the recent net gain is from population centers in the Midwest, such as Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit and Columbus, Ohio, as well as other parts of Western Pennsylvania. While Pittsburgh still has a net loss of older adults to retirement centers in Florida and Arizona, the in-migrants are typically younger people seeking employment.
"The impact of the recession on different regions -- while here in Pittsburgh we're faring better -- clearly is having an impact on people's decision of where to go," Mr. Briem said.
The Pittsburgh region actually exchanges more residents with metropolitan Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia, but those trades have not shown the same net gains locally.
Within southwestern Pennsylvania, Allegheny County continues to lose population to the other counties, the IRS data shows. The report said 1,599 more people moved out of Allegheny into the nine closest counties than moved into it from those counties between 2009 and 2010.
The official U.S. Census Bureau population count of 2,356,285 for the metropolitan region in April 2010 was 74,802 less than in 2000.
The bureau also releases a new population estimate annually, and the last one for July 2010 suggested the Pittsburgh metro area had gained 949 residents since July 2009 -- the first such boost in many years. Those estimates factor in births, deaths and international migration as well as domestic migration.
First Published December 10, 2011 12:00 am
