The decades-long population decline of the Pittsburgh area may be coming to a halt, some analysts predicted just weeks after the release of bleak census data showing that only metro areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina had seen greater declines.
Projections developed by demographers, economists, consultants and university researchers say the population drop that has plagued the Pittsburgh area since the 1920s will be replaced by an incremental increase over the next 20 years.
"Our plan recognizes very slow population growth," James Hassinger, executive director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, which projects a 5 percent population increase in its nine counties by 2030.
"It's a positive thing that we are showing an increase, but it's a modest increase," Hassinger said.
The Census Bureau found that about 60,000 people had left the seven-county Pittsburgh metropolitan area in the years 2000 to 2006, bringing the population to 2.3 million people. Pittsburgh is the only large metropolitan area where the death rate exceeds the birth rate.
Analysts say, however, that the factors that contributed to the drop — principally the closure of the steel mills in the 1980s — have faded. The region has diversified its economy since and could begin to draw more immigrants because of educational and high-tech opportunities. Job opportunities, analysts say, are again reaching the peak levels they hit about six years ago.
Christopher Briem, a University of Pittsburgh regional economist who studies local population trends, follows a computer model called Regional Economic Models Inc. that uses births, deaths, migration and other data to predict local and national trends.
In 2005, Briem did a study for Allegheny County that predicted that the population would drop until 2010, plateau five years later and begin rising after that. A Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission study has found similar results, estimating that the region will gain 126,000 residents by 2030.
Another study carried out by Woods and Poole Economics Inc., a Washington D.C.-based consulting firm, predicted that the turnaround would begin in 2006 and forecast that the region would add more than 10,000 residents between 2005 and 2006. But the latest Census figures found a drop of more than that number in that time.
"The range basically means you've seen the worst of your decline," said Martin Holdrich, a senior economist for Woods and Poole. "We don't know the future with certainty and no one does ... but you would expect it to bottom out or turn around, and that's what we're anticipating."
"Maybe instead of 2006 it occurs in 2007, or maybe it already occurred and census estimates aren't picking it up yet," he added.
In any case, when compared to population growth predicted for other parts of the country, Pittsburgh's is minuscule.
"We're not making grandiose predictions that this region is going to change tremendously overnight," said Bob Hurley, the county's deputy director of development. "But we'd love to have that plus-side."
