Texas was Census winner in decade past

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

The decade that opened with booming growth in the Sun Belt is closing on a quieter but similar note despite the toll the recession has taken on some of the USA's fastest-growing areas, according to Census estimates released Tuesday.

The July 1, 2009, population estimates for counties and metropolitan areas are the last before the official 2010 Census count is completed this year.

"Texas, so far, is the big winner this decade," says William Frey, demographer at theBrookings Institution. "Big Texas metros have done well because they avoided a lot of the pitfalls of the housing boom and bust".

Six Texas counties are among the 25 fastest-growing from 2000 to 2009 —Rockwall, Williamson, Collin, Hays, Fort Bend and Montgomery.

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The Houston metro area, which has a population of 5.9 million, is now the sixth-largest in the USA, up two notches since 2000. Austin, the 35th-largest metro at 1.7 million, moved up five spots and San Antonio, at 2.1 million, ranks 28th, up one rung.

Despite the devastating blow dealt by the housing meltdown, booming areas of the Sun Belt continued to grow after the recession began in December 2007.

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"Las Vegas still holds its own despite the fact that it's had a grim couple of years," Frey says. "Phoenix moved up. Tampa moved up".

The Phoenix metro, the 15th fastest-growing in the 1990s, is the 10th fastest grower so far this decade. The Las Vegas metro dropped from second fastest to sixth.

"It's a decade clearly of demographic ups and downs," Frey says. "It's a decade where a place like San Francisco started out not doing well because of the high-tech bust and then started inching up. It's also when places that made phenomenal gains in the first part of the decade — Florida, Arizona — tapered off.

Much of the Northeast maintained the status quo. Some of the population drops caused by people moving to the Sun Belt were offset the last two years because of the recession. People stopped moving and chose to stay put.

The five metros that had the biggest declines in population since 2000: New Orleans, Weirton-Steubenville, W.Va.-Ohio, Youngstown, Ohio, Pine Bluff, Ark., and Ocean City, N.J.

The Buffalo metro slipped from 42nd to 50th largest. Raleigh, N.C. moved up 10 spots to 49th.

USA Today