The Census Bureau has released annual population estimates for counties and metropolitan statistical areas, the latter of which is the government’s way of describing a region that is integrated with one or more cities.
The Lehigh Valley MSA is comprised of four counties: Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton in Pennsylvania, and Warren County, New Jersey. It is one of 384 such areas in the United States and Puerto Rico.
As of 2018, the Lehigh Valley MSA had 842,913 residents. A quick look at the annual population changes for the region since the last Census show relatively steady, though tepid population gains. The single exception was in 2013, when the population took a dip by a fraction of a percent.
The current population total is a 0.58% increase over 2017. That puts the region almost exactly in the middle of the 384 MSAs for overall one-year growth.
A look beyond the total population numbers to the four components of population change — births, deaths, domestic migration and international migration — shows more volatility. While births have outnumbered deaths in every year except 2015, the number of people moving in and out of the region has fluctuated.
The current report does not tell us from where people came who moved in, or where people go when they move out other than whether it was inside or outside the country. Those details will be published later in the year.
The numbers do tell us that net migration (the number of people moving into an area minus the number of people leaving) has been the force majeure of the region’s growth: the 4,375 people added to the population by net migration was almost 9 times as many as the 500 gained through “natural increase” (number of deaths subtracted from number of births).
The area would have lost population in 2014 through 2016 were it not for international migration outstripping domestic out migration. The numbers confirm that the region is drawing people from other countries to live, work and study here.
Lehigh County by far drew the most international migrants, although all four counties were net positive. Both Lehigh and Warren had losses in domestic migration, while Northampton and Carbon were positive.
Morning Call reporter Eugene Tauber can be reached at 610-820-6770 or etauber@mcall.com.
