YEAH, BUT HOW MANY ACRES DID THEY BRING? More than one million new residents moved to the Houston-Sugarland-Baytown Metropolitan Statistical Area between 2000 and 2008, according to a report released by the Census Bureau today. That puts the local area population at a little more than 5.7 million. “The Houston metropolitan area added more than 130,000 residents between July 1, 2007 and July 1, 2008, the second-highest number in the country after Dallas-Fort Worth, the bureau said. Among counties, Harris County added more than 72,000 people, trailing only Maricopa County, Ariz., in growth in sheer numbers.” [Houston Chronicle]
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I think we will continue to add more this year even with the economy in slow mode. It doesn’t mean housing will rebound or anything.
I think Houston will go through a period like the early 80s where a lot of people from the midwest and northeast will migrate to Texas. I’m already seeing a lot of Michigan and Indiana license plates in the areas of town I traverse over the last couple of months.
I share the same opinion. Is it just me, or do there seem to be more cars with Florida plates in town these days?
From kjb434:I think Houston will go through a period like the early 80s where a lot of people from the midwest and northeast will migrate to Texas. I’m already seeing a lot of Michigan and Indiana license plates in the areas of town I traverse over the last couple of months.
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I was a teenager in that era but I can’t imagine that the current influx will be anything like the previous one.
Remember that in the ’70s and early ’80s, while the Rust Belt was really suffering from a severe recession and a decade of high energy prices, Houston was booming like never before. It was the combination of these two things that encouraged so many people from Detroit to move here.
We don’t have that combination now. We have a severe recession that is especially hitting car, truck, and industrial machine manufacturers hard–so that will certainly encourage people from Indiana, etc., to move to where jobs are. And some of those jobs will be here for sure. But Houston is in a recession, too. The rig count has dropped like a stone for the past few months, and energy companies have been laying people off. Given this, we won’t be the same kind of migrant magnet we were in the late 70s and early 80s. At least, not unless there is a big turnaround in the energy industry.
(One memory I have of that earlier migrant boom is that the local hard rock station of the day, KLOL, started catering to the somewhat heavier rock tastes of the new Detroit teenagers–and even said so on the air, to the disgust of many of my Lynard Skynard-worshipping friends!)
well rwb, the cost of oil is going back up and i don’t think it is coming back down. personally i’d like to see stabalize in the 60s or low 70s where there is motivation for more exploration and drilling. i see that happening. it seems to me that part of the problem was the producers were pushing the cost up in 08 way too much. greed! i was reading an article the other day on oil and the cost where different producing countries obtained a profit was low in a number of them. of course there is transportation etc between there and here.
From rollo:
well rwb, the cost of oil is going back up and i don’t think it is coming back down.
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No one in the energy industry would cover that bet because they have all been burned by crazy price fluctuations since the 70s.
But if you are right, then that will provide the jobs magnet. I’m just saying that right now, when energy companies are laying people off, Houston is not the same kind of jobs magnet it was in the late 70s and early 80s. That may change in the future of course, but I still think it is worth considering how unique the situation before the big oil bust was. It had the perfect conditions for moving workers from Detroit to Houston.