Northwest Arkansas continued to lead in population growth among the state’s metropolitan statistical areas, followed by the Jonesboro and Little Rock areas, according to new estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
“Northwest Arkansas, Jonesboro, outlying counties in central Arkansas, that’s where you’ll see the most growth,” said Michael Pakko, the chief economist and state economic forecaster at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. “People are moving to where the jobs are.”
Growth patterns in Arkansas follow a nationwide trend of population moving away from rural areas into cities, though Arkansas still has a large population outside of metropolitan areas, Pakko said.
“Where you’ll see declining population is in Pine Bluff and nonmetro areas in the state,” Pakko said. “Largely in the southern half of the state is where we see population decline.”
Metropolitan statistical areas are geographical locations used to compile and assess census and related statistical data.
Hot Springs saw a slight bump in population, while Fort Smith saw a slight decline, according to the latest population estimates.
The Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway metropolitan area continues to have the largest population with 724,385 for 2013 and grew at a rate of 0.9 percent from 2012-13. In central Arkansas, growth is stronger in the outlying areas of Saline and Faulkner counties, a common pattern for larger metropolitan areas around the nation, Pakko said.
But that doesn’t mean that more residents in central Arkansas are moving into the suburbs, said Jonathan Lupton, a research planner with Metroplan, a metropolitan planning organization that serves Pulaski, Saline, Faulkner, Lonoke and Grant counties.
“We’re seeing a higher share of the population choosing to live in locations that are more central,” he said.
In 1990, a Metroplan analysis of the 25- to 34-year-old demographic showed that its members were spread out rather than centralized, living in areas like Chenal Valley in west Little Rock, northern Jacksonville and the far suburbs of Conway. Twenty years later, the findings were mostly opposite, as young adults were “much more concentrated,” he said.
Some of it, he said, is simply perspective. In past decades, people wanted to raise families, putting down roots in outlying counties and commuting in, Lupton said.
“That’s still plenty true,” he said. “But if you look at the demographics, there are just fewer younger families. The younger generation isn’t doing as well as they used to do. There’s more of a tendency to live in smaller housing units like apartments. What matters is being close to the job.”
The state has been slow to recover from the recession, he said, citing “a lack of corporate successes” lately with Hewlett-Packard cutting about 500 jobs at its customer-support center in Conway in July 2013 and the Verizon Communications Inc. purchase of Alltel.
The Little Rock area has also gained some jobs, Lupton said, and has some underlying strengths, including a relatively low cost of living, “high-quality” downtown life and attractive landscapes like trails.
Still, single-family housing permits slowed from 2012-13 in nearly every city in central Arkansas except for Hot Springs Village and Sherwood, he said. The units - essentially individual houses - really “jumped off a cliff,” he said.
“There’s a link between jobs and housing,” he said. “Jobs have been a little weaker here and a little bit more in Northwest Arkansas,” he said.
Central and Northwest Arkansas, though, are “very different economically,” he said, increasing the interconnectivity between the two areas.
In January, Northwest Arkansas had the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 5.9percent, according to the latest available statistics for the state’s metropolitan regions. The Little Rock metropolitan area had the next-lowest unemployment rate at 7.1 percent. Arkansas’ unemployment rate was 7.3 percent in January, just above the national rate of 6.6 percent.
From 2012-13, the population in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metropolitan statistical area, which includes Benton, Washington and Madison counties and a small part of Missouri, grew by 1.9 percent to 491,966.
From April 2010 through July 2012, U.S. Census Bureau estimates show that Northwest Arkansas’ population grew by an average of 23 residents per day, said Rob Smith, spokesman for the Northwest Arkansas Council. The 2013 estimate shows the rate of growth at 24 people per day.
If that trend continues, Smith said Northwest Arkansas’ metropolitan area will reach 500,000 residents by the end of May.
The Northwest Arkansas Council is a nonprofit organization of area business and civic leaders. The council was formed in 1990 to help cities work together to benefit the region as a whole.
Reaching a population of 500,000 would make Northwest Arkansas more attractive to companies searching for sites to establish or expand their businesses, said Mike Harvey, chief operating officer for the council. Companies often hire site-selection consultants, and the consultants pick thresholds to narrow their searches. A common population threshold is a metropolitan area with a population of 500,000, he said.
The northwest and northeast corners of the state have been high-growth regions, Pakko said. Both regions have higher employment than at the onset of the recent recession, which began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009.
In the Jonesboro metropolitan statistical area, which includes Craighead and Poinsett counties, the population increased by 1.2 percent from 2012-13 to 125,633, according to the Census Bureau.
“Its growth has been quite remarkable over the past few years,” Pakko said.
While the Fort Smith statistical area - which covers Sebastian, Crawford and Franklin counties in Arkansas and Le Flore and Sequoyah counties in Oklahoma - was hit by the closing of a Whirlpool plant and the slowdown of heavy industrial manufacturing during the recession, Jonesboro saw growth in food-processing, which was less susceptible to the recession, Pakko said.
Enrollment at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro has increased, as well, he said.
Northeast Arkansas “is becoming a regional hub of economic activity,” Pakko said.
In Jonesboro, some of the Valley View and Westside school district neighborhoods have been annexed into Jonesboro. The annexations have helped growth, said Marsha Guffey, the city’s metropolitan planning organization coordinator. The annexations have increased residential development, which is beginning to shift to the northeast corner of the city where NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital built a new facility, she said.
Commercial development is booming on Red Wolf Boulevard near downtown Jonesboro, she said.
Most of the population growth in the state is because of people moving into Arkansas, Pakko said.
“People are still moving to Arkansas in spite of the fact that we’ve had relatively slow job growth since the end of the recession,” Pakko said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/27/2014