The July 2008 Metro population estimates show that some long established regional growth trends continued but some new trends have appeared. The continuing trends include the high population growth rates in the South and the West relative to the Midwest and the Northeast, the population decline in smaller manufacturing, farming and textile Metros and rapid growth near the ocean relative to the interior.

Some existing trends have become more prominent. This includes the population decline in the motor vehicle dominated metros and the settlement of foreign immigrants in large urban areas instead of just along the border. Note that the motor vehicle industry extends south of the Great Lakes states through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina.

The latest data shows several new population trends. In the Rocky Mountains, rapid population growth has shifted from the South (Arizona and Nevada) to the north (Colorado, Utah and Idaho). Unemployed immigrants are leaving the southern region while refugees from expensive California are moving to the northern region. Within California, the same migration trends are shifting rapid population growth from the south to the north. San Francisco and Sacramento together attracted (net) 45, 000 foreign and domestic immigrants while Los Angeles lost 25,000.

Several decades of rapid population growth have ended in Florida and population growth has slowed appreciably in Atlanta. Some of the migration that previously went to Florida and Georgia is now going to Texas and North Carolina. Raleigh (+4.3%) and Austin (+3.8%) were the fastest expanding metro areas in the year ended last July. Note that except for small Sioux Falls, SD, al;l of the rapid growth metros are in the South and West.

The metros with declining population are mostly in the Midwest but the list also includes small, older, manufacturing centers elsewhere in the country and few small Florida beach resorts that catered to lower income retirees.

Twenty-one metros attracted (net) 10,000 or more domestic and international immigrants during the year. Boston is the only city not in the South or West that is on the list. People are voting with their feet that these cities will have the most new jobs in the coming few years.

Detroit tops the list of metros that people are abandoning and almost certainty will again in 2009. Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor and Jackson — all motor vehicle centers — are also on the list as is nearby Toledo. Los Angeles now has more out migration that New York City which had topped the list for many years.