Population continues to shrink, Census data shows
For the second year in a row, Allegheny County experienced one of the nation’s sharpest decreases in population, continuing an overall decline in Western Pennsylvania that poses risks to the region’s economic development as it recovers from the pandemic.
According to new Census Bureau data released late last week, Allegheny County lost a total of 7,780 residents in 2023, one of the 10 largest population losses experienced by U.S. counties between April 2022 and July 2023.
“A lot of folks get very upset about this. But a lot of this is baked in — it’s been baked in for decades,” said Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Social and Urban Research.
While the trend is significant for the region, experts caution that the county’s shrinking population is part of an ongoing demographic change, not a sudden mass exodus.
Western Pennsylvania has steadily lost residents after marquee industries left the region in the 1970s. And according to Alan Mallach, a leading expert in regional revitalization and a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress, stagnating population has become a dominant trend across the nation and globe.
“There’s not a whole lot of net population growth out there. And for what there is, it’s concentrating in these South, Midwest, Southwest and Northwest regions,” said Mr. Mallach.
In addition, Mr. Briem pointed to the county’s aging population as a driving force of the ongoing shrinkage. Consider: Allegheny County saw more than 1,700 deaths than birthsthis year, the new data shows.
“You can’t get around the fact that being an older region, we suffer from natural population decline. It’s not something you can change,” Mr. Briem said.
Along with the natural population shifts — the Census Bureau’s term for births and deaths — nearly 6,000 residents migrated away from the county last year, which indicates a lack of economic opportunity in the area, local experts say.
“When you look at the large employers in Allegheny County, you’re left with the universities and the government. And they’re not drawers for people living in other states,” said Frank Gamrat, the executive director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank focused on regional development.
Mr. Gamrat said Pittsburgh’s politicians need to take a much more businessfriendly approach to economic policy, such as lowering the corporate net income tax rate and conducting more frequent property reassessments.
He cited South Carolina, which has seen a 15% increase in employment since 2019, as a state whose economic policies are cited by experts as reasons for the state’s explosive growth.
“Your population is what fuels your labor force. And when the labor force starts to decline, so does the economic engine of the area,” he said.
In her January inaugural address, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato referred to the region’s stagnating population as “real and urgent,” and stressed the need to make the county more immigrant-friendly.
“We’ve known for decades that we need to grow our population, but we still have one of the smallest immigrant populations of any major city,” she said in the address.
Ms. Innamorato’s office declined to provide further comment on any proposed policies to support that goal. Mayor Ed Gainey’s office also declined to comment.
Despite the region’s continuously bleeding population, this year’s data indicates the losses may indeed be slowing: Allegheny County lost more than 12,000 residents in 2022, compared to nearly 8,000 last year.
The change represents just a 0.63% drop in population; the county has shrunk by nearly 2% since 2020.
“To see that the loss is not as significant over the previous year, hopefully some of the pandemic disruption that happened is settling down a bit,” said Jim Futrell, vice president of market research at the nonprofit Allegheny Conference on Community Development.
COVID-19 created massive volatility in urban centers, many of which are still struggling to rebound from surges in violent crime and office vacancies.
Overall, the Pittsburgh metropolitan area lost nearly 10,000 residents last year, a 0.4% decrease in population, according to the new data. Other metropolitan areas, including New
York, Los Angeles and Chicago, also hemorrhaged tens of thousands of residents last year.
Meanwhile, some suburban counties like Butler experienced a rare influx of new residents — a trend in recent years that’s believed to be fueled in part by a migration of people from Allegheny County.
Last year, Butler added more than 1,000 people, while its overall population has swelled by 2.23% since 2020, the data shows.
According to Mr. Futrell, a bleeding population can pose risks to the region’s tax base, home resale values, job recruitment and other key economic drivers. As a result, the Allegheny Conference has developed new initiatives they hope will create attractive conditions for economic growth.
The conference’s “backyard strategy” — focusing on growing existing companies in Western Pennsylvania — was devised in part from data that shows that more than two-thirds of business investment activity comes from within the 10county region, rather than outside employers.
“Job creation tends to feed on itself,” said Mr. Futrell. “If you get a reputation as a region where you can build a career — not just get a job, but build a career — that’s going to serve as a draw for people.”
Mr. Futrell also lauded key provisions in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s economic development strategy, unveiled in February — such as streamlining the state’s notoriously difficult permitting process — which he said will act as a catalyst for job growth.
“We’ve just not been competitive with our surrounding states, in terms of, if a company wants to set up here, here’s what we can do to assist you,” he said.
To Mr. Mallach, a former director of housing and economic development in Trenton, N.J., much attention has been devoted to reversing population declines, but local officials should instead focus more heavily on issues such as quality of life and fostering theregion’s human capital.
“The real issue is not how to get back on the growth train, but how to figure out how a place like Allegheny County can thrive without growth,”he said.
Mr. Briem, of the Universityof Pittsburgh, agreed that managing local infrastructure to account for the region’s shifting population will be much more critical than curbing natural population declines.
The fragmentation of Western Pennsylvania’s local governments, he added, could pose much more sweeping consequences to regionaleconomies that need to betterwork together.
“When you have a local municipality that is suffering from population decline, they probably do have acute issues — and trying to have them plan for a future is difficult if they have to rely on their own resources, and aren’t integrated into sort of a larger regional plan,” Mr. Briemsaid.