Tale of two cities: OKC gains more population than Tulsa
Rural areas continue to shrink
The Oklahoma City metro area continued a streak of population growth last year, gaining 11,274 people between the middle of 2016 and the middle of 2017, according to Census Bureau figures released Thursday.
“We also know that there’s a lot of highly educated twenty-somethings inside that 11,000,” Mayor Mick Cornett said. “We can tell by the job creators, the entrepreneurs and the new businesses that are being created. So, that’s really exciting.”
It was the seventh year in a row that the state’s largest metropolitan area had a significant population increase. Nearly 1.4 million people now live in the area.
“It’s good growth,” Cornett said. “It’s higher than our traditional average, if you look back at Oklahoma City through the decades. It’s a good number.”
Oklahoma City grew much more than the state’s other three metropolitan areas of Tulsa, Enid and Lawton. The Tulsa area gained 3,241 people last year, Lawton’s population remained relatively stagnant and the Enid area lost 803 people.
In Oklahoma’s small towns, the statistics tell a much different story than that told in its big cities. Of the state’s 77 counties, 49 saw a decrease
in population last year. Of the nine counties nationwide to lose the largest percentage of people, two were in Oklahoma. Washita County in the west shed 340 people last year, a 3 percent drop. Neighboring Beckham County lost 639 people, a 2.8 percent decrease from the prior year.
Of the state’s 15 small city clusters — known as micropolitan areas — nine suffered population losses last year, including Ada, Guymon, Miami and Ponca City. Six others, such as Durant, Muskogee, Shawnee and Stillwater, gained people.
By losing population from most of its counties, Oklahoma broke with a national trend.
Most American counties experience a natural increase, meaning more people are born there than die. About 61 percent of counties did in the 2017 fiscal year, compared to about 38 percent that decreased naturally. Population figures are also impacted by migration. Fifty-three percent of counties nationwide experienced a positive net migration last year, compared to 47 percent that lost people to migration.
“Most of the counties in the nation grew,” said Molly Cromwell, a demographer at the Census Bureau, “with 57 percent gaining population in 2017 as compared to 52.7 percent in 2016.”
In Oklahoma, however, 64 percent of counties shrunk. Only 35 percent saw an increase and one, Coal County, saw no change at all to its population of 5,642 people.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s neighbor to the south continues to grow. Of the 10 counties that gained the largest number of people between mid-2016 and mid-2017, six were in Texas. The metro area that includes Dallas and Fort Worth gained 146,238 people in a year.
“Historically, the Dallas metro area attracts large numbers from both international and domestic migration,” Cromwell said. “Many of the other largest metro areas in the country rely mostly on international migration and natural increase for growth.”