NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release: March 31, 2023
Media Contact: Jan.Roeser@labor.idaho.gov
Net migration was the driver behind 34,719 people added to Idaho’s population from July 2021 to July 2022, accounting for 88% of its growth, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released this week. The gains were mostly from domestic in-migration – people moving to Idaho from other states – rather than from another country or international in-migration.
The bureau also reported a population growth slowdown for many counties since the height of the pandemic. The release included revised estimates for 2020 and 2021, along with components of change to explain upticks or troughs from the previous year.
The remaining share of the state’s population growth, nearly 12%, was from natural change – when births outweigh deaths. In 22 counties, deaths outweighed births, resulting in negative natural change, but those losses were offset with net migration growth. This set Idaho apart from the almost three-fourths of all counties nationally that reported more deaths than births, or natural decline.
Since the decennial census – April 2020 – net migration accounted for 91% of population change in Idaho, slightly above the 88% of the past year.
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