US Census Bureau data for Austin and other cities

[paul78701]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

The only 1 million metro in Texas is El Paso/ Las Cruces . Still can't believe Austin is a 2 million metro. When I moved to Austin back in 1997, the metropolitan just hit 1 million people. Now 18 years later it's twice the size.

I haven't checked the math on this, but I believe that Austin's population has been doubling every 20-25 years or so. Assuming that trend continues, we can expect 4 million people around 2035-2040. I believe that is in line with what demographers have been predicting.

If that is how it really plays out, it will be quite amazing. I don't think anybody can really picture what the metro area will look like with that many people.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by paul78701

I haven't checked the math on this, but I believe that Austin's population has been doubling every 20-25 years or so. Assuming that trend continues, we can expect 4 million people around 2035-2040. I believe that is in line with what demographers have been predicting.

If that is how it really plays out, it will be quite amazing. I don't think anybody can really picture what the metro area will look like with that many people.

...or what I-35 will look like.

[Tech House]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

El Paso metro actually isn't growing at all. There was a year in the past five where it actually lost population according to the estimates.

A border town that loses population? Seems like that would get Trump and co. very excited.

[lzppjb]

Originally Posted by Tech House

A border town that loses population? Seems like that would get Trump and co. very excited.

All moving further inland.

[The ATX]

Originally Posted by lzppjb

All moving further inland.

Yup. Everyone goes where the jobs are.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Tech House

A border town that loses population? Seems like that would get Trump and co. very excited.

lolol

[wwmiv]

Just as a recap of the numbers, here are Texas's metropolitan statistical areas as of the most recent 2014 estimates:

(numbers are in millions)

Dallas-Fort Worth: 6.95
Houston: 6.49
--------------------
San Antonio: 2.33
Austin: 1.94
--------------------
El Paso: 0.84
McAllen: 0.83
--------------------
Corpus Christi: 0.45
Killeen: 0.42
Brownsville 0.42
Beaumont: 0.41
--------------------
Lubbock: 0.31
Laredo: 0.27
Waco: 0.26
Amarillo: 0.26
College Station: 0.24
Tyler: 0.22
Longview: 0.22
--------------------
Abilene: 0.17
Midland: 0.16
Odessa: 0.15
Wichita Falls: 0.15
Texarkana: 0.15
--------------------
Sherman-Denison: 0.12
San Angelo: 0.12
Victoria: 0.10

I've divided them up into tiers based on what seems to be pretty natural breaking points in their size.

[drummer]

^^ Just out of curiosity, why are Midland and Odessa separated? I'm not hugely familiar with the area or the ties between the two (only been there a couple of times), but it seems to me like it would make sense to have them together.

Second question: does the Killeen estimate include Belton and Temple?

[electricron]

Originally Posted by drummer

^^ Just out of curiosity, why are Midland and Odessa separated? I'm not hugely familiar with the area or the ties between the two (only been there a couple of times), but it seems to me like it would make sense to have them together.

Second question: does the Killeen estimate include Belton and Temple?

Obviously there are not sufficient commuters traveling between Midland and Odessa for the US Census Bureau to place them into the same MSA.

Belton is included with Killeen, Temple, and Fort Hood MSA because it is within Bell County. The three counties of Bell, Coryell, and Lampasas make up the Killeen, Temple, and Fort Hood MSA.

MSA rules are:
In order to be designated as MSA, the region must have at least on UZA to serve as the core of the MSA.
The county that contains the UZA is called the core county of the MSA.
Additional outlying that have a high degree of economic or social integration with the core are added to the MSA.
Outlying counties qualify for inclusion in the MSA if
a) more than 25% of the employed residents commute to the core county
b) more than 25% of the jobs in the outlying county are held by residents in the core county
The boundary of an MSA is coterminous with the county boundaries that qualify for inclusion.

FYI = An UZA is a census-designated urban area with 50,000 residents or more.

[Tech House]

Originally Posted by electricron

Obviously there are not sufficient commuters traveling between Midland and Odessa for the US Census Bureau to place them into the same MSA.

Interesting, I had been told by a couple people from the Midland-Odessa area that Odessa was the blue collar bedroom community for jobs in Midland but apparently that's more of a perception than a reality.

I'm also surprised that El Paso, a city with nearby mountains and a pleasant, 4-season climate featuring dry* air, doesn't grow as much as the sauna in the lower valley. I guess it's not strategically located enough to attract businesses.

* - "dry air" is a phenomenon that many of you may have forgotten about in association with "the outdoors." It occurs regularly during winter months in central Texas but is a near-continuous feature of El Paso. "Dry air" is generally thought of as being more pleasant, as it allows the body to shed excess heat via evaporative cooling. For anyone who is curious as to what this feels like in an outdoor context, stick around for a few weeks, it's about to get tolerable to live in Austin again.

[wwmiv]

^LOL^

El Paso also happens to be one of the safest major cities in the United States, but it doesn't have, historically, any kind of money or tax base with which to fuel any growth. Ergo, it's stuck in this kind of aggregate cycle of poverty.

McAllen, on the other hand, is also stuck in an aggregate cycle of poverty, but - because of the luck of geography - it is the nearest port of entry in the United States for immigrants from Latin America, so it happens to absorb even poorer immigrants thus making it's economic situation even worse.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Tech House

Interesting, I had been told by a couple people from the Midland-Odessa area that Odessa was the blue collar bedroom community for jobs in Midland but apparently that's more of a perception than a reality.

No, they're pretty distinct cities even though the public perception is that they're closely tied together. If Midland and Ector counties continue to grow at the rate they are currently (Ector has already almost surpassed it's whole last decade growth rate in the first four years of this decade, and Midland county's rate so far has been even faster - though with more of a slow down from last decade), they'll be over .5m together by 2030, which would definitely imply a single metropolitan area by then given the small geographic area that growth would likely be within.

If their growth slows down slightly to be the average over the past 14 years, they'll be at just under 440k by 2030, still likely a single MSA by then. However, if they slow down more to their average growth over the last 24 years, they'll be at just under 400k by then. That's maybe still good enough to have enough commuter exchange for a single MSA (the reason this is the case is because as areas gain more population, there are greater numbers of people located at the periphery who then experience relative cost to travel to the next county over for employment, rather than traveling an essentially similar drive into the center of their own county), but not a sure thing. The wild card, of course, is whether all of this growth will occur within the counties themselves or without adjacent counties (thus pulling the adjecent

I think we'll see the tipping point at around 400-415k for consolidation into a single metropolitan area. Currently they're at just under 310k.

For a little bit more fun, if they pick up growth a bit more (which isn't unreasonable as a projection possibility given that the economy has been growing fast more recently than it was at the beginning of the decade), they'll by at just under 610k by 2030.

Just because I love doing this stuff, here's the 100k benchmarks under each scenario. Some of these become unrealistic as time passes, of course, as growth patterns do not remain static over time. The area will probably experience patches of each of these growth rate categories. I think the faster growth rate is probably the one to watch over the next two to three years, followed by the fast rate in the couple of years after that, and a settling down into the mid-level growth rate for the couple of years after that. After that who knows.

Current (fast) growth:
400k - 2022
500k - 2029
600k - 2035
700k - 2040
800k - 2044
900k - 2048
1mil - 2051 (totally unrealistic long term)

Mid-level growth:
400k - 2026
500k - 2036
600k - 2045
700k - 2052

Slower growth:
400k - 2031
500k - 2045
600k - 2056

Faster growth:
400k - 2020
500k - 2026
600k - 2030
700k - 2033
800k - 2037
900k - 2040
1mil - 2042
etc. (totally unrealistic long-term)

[wwmiv]

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/...rowth-in-2014/

The fastest growing economies in the U.S. last year were largely found deep in the heart of Texas.

Half of the 16 U.S. metro areas where the economy grew at a 6% rate or better last year were in Texas, led by the energy-rich Midland region’s 24.1% advance in gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

1. Midland (24.1%)
2. San Angelo (11.4%)
6. Dallas-Fort Worth (8.5%)
8. Victoria (6.7%)
10. Corpus Christi (6.5%)
12. Odessa (6.3%)
13. Tyler (6.2%)
14. Austin (6.1%)
20. Beaumont (5.7%)
36. Bryan-College Station (4.0%)
46. San Antonio (3.8%)
48. Laredo (3.7%)
64. Longview (3.3%)
84. Lubbock (2.8%)
103. Waco (2.5%)
104. McAllen (2.5%)
108. Amarillo (2.4%)
----------------------------- (national growth rate at 2.3%)
127. Wichita Falls (2.1%)
150. Houston (1.8%)
208. Brownsville (1.0%)
227. El Paso (0.7%)
232. Abilene (0.6%)
253. Sherman-Denison (0.3%)
257. Killeen-Temple (0.3%)
325. Texarkana (-1.0%)

Notes on the major cities:

Dallas-Fort Worth: a major increase in growth, which suggests that Houston may not be able to catch up w/r/t population any time soon (5.4%, 5.3%, and now 8.5%).

Austin: Our growth went back up a bit (6.3% to 4.7% to 6.1%), thankfully.

San Antonio: slightly decreased growth, but basically stable (4.8% to 4.7% to 3.8%).

McAllen: same thing (3.9% both previous years to 2.5% over the past year).

Houston: Houston's growth has slowed down significantly, from 7.1% to 6.5% to 1.8%.

El Paso: There's a reason why El Paso hasn't had fast population growth, and that's because it hasn't had any economic drivers (slow growth in the MSA GDP each year, 2.0%, 1.9%, and .7%)

I'm gonna do another post here in a moment ranking Texas metros with their 2014 GDP per capita, now that we have these numbers from the Commerce Dept.

[JoninATX]

Houston is growing that slow? I knew the O/G industry suffering, but I expected atleast 3% of growth rate for Houston.

[Jdawgboy]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

Houston is growing that slow? I knew the O/G industry suffering, but I expected atleast 3% of growth rate for Houston.

I guess because it is so large it's kinda difficult to see the slow down especially since there is still a lot of construction going on. If the slow down continues after the buildings under construction are complete it will be much more noticable when no more cranes rise.

[Novacek]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

Houston is growing that slow? I knew the O/G industry suffering, but I expected atleast 3% of growth rate for Houston.

Houston is really odd, especially since that's the 2014 growth number, and the other big energy centers were still going gangbusters.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by JoninATX

Houston is growing that slow? I knew the O/G industry suffering, but I expected atleast 3% of growth rate for Houston.

Well, other cities that rely on the oil boom had good growth (Midland, Odessa, Tyler).

[wwmiv]

Here's some quick plots that I did:



Here you have all Texas metros and a simple line of best fit. Those above the line are doing better economically given their population and those below it are doing worse economically given their population. Interestingly, compared to Texas metros, Austin (I think it's pretty clear which dot is Austin...) is actually doing worse economically than what you'd expect given its population (ignoring all the possible endogeneity issues present...). If the line of best fit incorporated all metros and rural areas as well, Austin would almost certainly be above the line (given that, well, the rest of the country and particularly rural areas are performing so badly relative to Texas, which would drag down the line).





Here we have the same line of best fit, but zoomed in on the bottom corner, and with labels. Notice how horribly El Paso and particularly McAllen are doing. Despite being smaller by many times, Midland has a larger economy than either. Notice also that although Odessa is growing at a breakneck pace as well, that its economic size is more what you'd expect for the size of city that it is.

[wwmiv]

As for GMP per capita (I've rounded, since these are based on estimates and are thus prone to error):

Midland: $164k
Houston: $70k
Dallas-Fort Worth: $66k
Odessa: $61k
Austin: $55k
Victoria: $53k
Longview: $50k
Beaumont: $48k
Corpus Christi: $48k
Tyler: $47k
Wichita Falls: $43k
Amarillo: $42k
San Antonio: $41k
San Angelo: $40k
Lubbock: $38k
Waco: $38k
Abilene: $37k
Killeen-Temple: $35k
Bryan-College Station: $34k
El Paso: $31k
Sherman-Denison: $31k
Texarkana: $30k
Laredo: $26k
Brownsville: $20k
McAllen: $20k

[JoninATX]

Makes some sense. Houston is an odd ball, the city is littered with cranes and it seems construction is endless. So hopefully the city won't be as bas as it was back in the 1980's. On the bright side, the city and metropolitan are growing.