The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE —
One-half of a percentage point might not seem like much, but when it signifies a gain in Terre Haute’s population, it’s welcome news. For too long, the trend has seemed to be in the opposite direction.
U.S. Census figures published last week are only updated estimates based on the Census of 2000, but they provide a reliable indicator of population growth and decline as the nation waits for the results of the 2010 Census next June.
This time around, Terre Haute appears not only to have reversed its losing trajectory, but it is doing better than many of its neighbors, including Sullivan, Vincennes, Clinton and Rockville.
Any gain at all seems almost miraculous, considering that the area’s unemployment rate last month was 11 percent and that we have lost one big employer, Pfizer, along with many handfuls of other jobs since a shocking mid-decade estimate in 2005.
After those 2005 figures, Vigo County’s population had dropped so precipitously, projections for 2010 were for the county to dip below 100,000 residents for the first time since 1940. Terre Haute’s decline was on a par, shrinking from 59,516 inhabitants in 2000 to 58,212 in 2005.
The new figures indicate we will not meet the depressing fate predicted a few years ago. Like Terre Haute, Vigo County shows a modest population gain, 0.2 percent, from 2008 to 2009, but we’ve stayed well above the 100,000 mark, reaching a total of 105,967 people in 2009. That is higher than our 2000 Census levels and more than 2,000 residents above the 2004 low of 103,916.
Except for such hard-hit cities as Gary, Hammond, Muncie, Anderson and Evansville, it looks like a good time to be a Hoosier city. Terre Haute and other Indiana urban centers seem to be following traditional economic patterns, attracting people during a bad economy.
According to last week’s updates, incorporated cities and towns accounted for 70 percent of Hoosier population growth from 2006 to 2009. As Maureen Hayden of the Tribune-Star’s CNHI Statehouse Bureau reported, that is a reversal from the early part of the decade when Hoosiers moved away from cities to the suburbs.
The state, itself, also reflects the same recession upside, managing to retain and grow population at better rates than surrounding states Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. Since 2000, Indiana’s population has increased 5.6 percent. Matt Kinghorn of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business told Hayden that people tend to stay put when the housing market is so depressed and jobs are insecure.
Whatever their reasons, the Census update tells us that last July there were 1,688 more men, women and children in Terre Haute than there were the same month in 2005. We’re glad they’re here, we hope they stay and we’d like to see them go forth and multiply.
