Nebraska ranked 20th in the US in population growth rate between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017.
That’s according to the US Census Bureau’s latest population estimates for all states. The report was released last month.
David Drozd, Research Coordinator with UNO’s Center for Public Affairs Research, says it was another good year for Nebraska’s population growth and pretty steady comparable to recent years.
Drozd says the state’s population is estimated to have increased by about 12,500 people, so we now exceed 1.92 million.
"The population changes in two ways and Nebraska’s population growth is dominated by the births exceeding the level of deaths. And that contributed a positive 11,000 to our total population growth in the last year. And then we also had a net of about 1500 people move into the state versus moving away from it.”
Drozd says one negative in the report was that Nebraska’s estimated level of domestic migration was the worst in the latest year of any so far this decade.
He says the state had a high level of domestic outmigration to other states.
This was expected and Drozd explains was likely due to the changes at Cabela’s, ConAgra and the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, among others.
More information is available at Census.gov.