Rural America losing population

The Hill - Annual population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday show 60 percent of American counties experienced natural population growth over the last year. In just over half the nation’s counties, more people migrated in than moved out.

But since the recession, the vast majority of American population growth has been concentrated in a very small number of counties — ones that are home to booming metropolises.

Since 2010, the 100 largest counties in America have added a total of 9.3 million new residents. All but six of those counties have experienced growth.

The six laggards are all cold-weather Rust Belt counties around cities like Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis, where old-line manufacturing jobs primarily in the auto sector have vanished.

By contrast, two-thirds of the 2,155 counties with populations under 50,000 have seen populations decline since 2010. Counties with populations of less than 25,000 have lost a net 274,000 residents — or about 2 percent of their total population.