Utah population tops 2.8 million, but growth rate is cut in half

Utah's population exceeded 2.8 million this year, but what had been high-speed growth has slowed to a comparative crawl, state officials said.

That came as the state for the first time in 19 years had a significant drop in its number of births. Also, what has been a flood of immigrants to the state turned into a trickle.

"Two years ago, we added 84,000 people to our state, which was like adding a city about the size of Ogden. This year, we added 42,310, which is like adding a city the size of Draper," said state planning coordinator Mike Mower, who chairs the Utah Population Estimates Committee, which met Tuesday.

"So in two years, our growth has been cut in half," he said as his committee officially estimated Utah's population, as of July 1, at 2,800,089, just 89 people over the 2.8 million mark.

Mower said the major reason for the slowdown "is simple. It's the recession. As the economy slowed down, fewer people came to Utah looking for jobs."

State demographer Juliette Tennert said the committee figured the state had a net in-migration of just 1,547 people this year. In comparison, the state had an estimated 16,648 immigrants in 2008 and 44,252 in 2007.

In short, Utah had 28 times fewer net immigrants this year than two years ago, before the recession.

"But we still had a positive in-migration. That means the economy in Utah is likely still somewhat better, relatively, than the economy in other states, and we are still attracting some people here," Tennert said.

She said she expects immigration to pick up when the economy picks up. "We expect that 2009 will be the lowest point for in-migration, and that it will increase in coming years," she said.

But the state is expecting births to decrease for a while.

University of Utah research economist Pam Perlich, a member of the committee, said the state apparently appears to be at the end of several years of baby boomers' grandchildren having children in large numbers, as the state broke a streak of 10 years of record-high births and ended essentially 19 years without any significant annual decrease in births.

Perlich explained a peak in births once came about 1961 from the post-World War II baby-boom generation; another came about 1982 as their children had children, called the baby-boom echo; and a third appears to have peaked last year as baby-boomers' grandchildren had kids in what is called the "echo echo."