Iowa is among the 42 states that saw population growth from July of 2018 to July of 2019. U-S Census Bureau data released Monday shows Iowa’s overall population grew ever so slightly from year-to-year, by about 64-hundred people.
Gary Krob (KROHB, rhymes with “strobe”) is coordinator for the State Data Center in the State Library of Iowa. He says Iowa is on track to see population growth for the DECADE of about three-point-six percent. “We don’t grow as fast as some other areas, but it’s a nice, slow, steady, maintainable growth rate for us,” Krob says. “Any growth is better than a population decline.”
Updated population estimates for Iowa’s 99 counties will be released in March. In June, updated census data for cities will be released. “That’ll give us a really good indication of where the growth is and where the decline is in our state,” Krob says.
Iowa’s population growth can largely be attributed to having more people from other countries move into Iowa. That’s because nearly 29-thousand Iowa residents have moved to another state this decade. “But that’s actually lower than it was last decade,” Krob says. “I believe from 2000 to 2009, I believe we were looking at closer to 52,000 people — negative 52,000 people, so that domestic migration, while still negative, is at a much lower number than it was last decade.”
Among Iowa’s neighbors, Illinois saw significant population losses and Iowa’s population growth rate was higher than it was in Missouri, Kansas and Wisconsin. Population gains in Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota were higher than Iowa’s.
U.S. Census report on Iowa population as of July, 2019
