OK, new houses that seem to be popping up all over town might make a person think otherwise. And if you hang around long enough, you’re likely to hear the old-timers complaining about how bad the traffic on Grand Avenue is these days. The people who drive those cars have to live somewhere, right?

But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, both Laramie and Albany County have lost residents each year since the 2000 Census.

The next official census takes place in 2010. In between those major events, the Population Division at the Census Bureau keeps tabs on city, county and state populations. Their counts are estimates based on birth and death rates and people moving in and out of communities, and they give a good snapshot of the changes taking place in a city.

While Laramie had 27,204 residents as of the 2000 Census, it had 25,688 as of July 1, 2006 — a loss of 1,516 people. Data for 2007 will be available later this year. Albany County had 32,014 residents in 2000 and 30,360 in 2006, for a loss of 1,654 people.

What about the students at the University of Wyoming, Laramie County Community College and Wyoming Technical Institute? They’re all included in these numbers, and while there’s room for a small margin of error, given the nature of the Census Bureau’s methodology, it’s probably not enough to offset the people who are leaving the community.

In 2000, the Census Bureau sent a questionnaire to every household in the country. In addition, census workers went door-to-door to the 17 percent of households without addresses, with the goal of counting every person in the United States. That came out to 98 million forms.

That 2000 Census number was the starting point for subsequent population estimates. Greg Harper, a demographer for the Population Division, explained that the bureau first estimates county-level populations before moving to the city level.

To do that, a contact for every state provides information about births and deaths for the previous year by county. Then the bureau looks at how many people have moved into or out of a county. Movement within the United States is based on address information provided on IRS tax returns. If you file a return from Adams County, Neb., one year and from Albany County the next, the bureau will subtract you from the Adams population and add you to the Albany population.

But not just you by yourself.

“There’s a couple of assumptions when you’re doing that,” Harper said. “You’re assuming that the people who file taxes, their migration patterns are similar to the people who don’t file taxes.”

That means the bureau assumes that you moved your entire household with you, which they know about because you claim dependants and a spouse on your return.

“Whether that’s true in every case, we don’t really know. We don’t have any evidence that says that’s not true,” Harper said.

Once the bureau has determined a county-level population estimate, it determines the populations of cities and towns within a county by looking at the ratio of housing units, factoring in information about construction permits and mobile home sales.

“Essentially, the share that a place has of a county’s housing units is the share of the population they will get,” Harper said.

The bureau uses occupancy rates and household size it gathered during the 2000 Census to help make that determination, and while that information has probably changed in the last few years, Harper said changes are usually accounted for when compared to county totals.

“If your county population isn’t growing that fast, but you’re gaining a lot of housing units, then you can probably assume you have more vacant housing units now that you had previously,” he said.

Albany County is gaining housing units. There were 15,215 in 2000, compared to 16,329 in July of 2005, for an increase of 7.32 percent. What’s more, the rental vacancy rate for the first half of 2007 — 2.6 percent — was the highest of any county in the state except those with less than 400 rental units. Albany County has more than 2,000 units, according to the Wyoming Housing Database Partnership.

In Albany County, the city of Laramie accounts for about 90 percent of the population. Harper said that because Laramie is so big compared to the rest of the county, the city’s population figure is less dependant on the number of housing units.

“It doesn’t really matter what the housing unit data are doing because the population is really constrained by that county total,” he said. “Even if Laramie’s adding housing units, if we’re still showing the Albany County population declining — which it looks like we’re doing — then Laramie is still going to follow that same trend. It looks like for whatever reason, our data just isn’t showing movement to Albany County.”

Eve Newman’s email address is lbedit6@laramieboomerang.com.

Community involvement necessary

By Aaron LeClair
Boomerang Staff Writer