The surge of young adults relocating to Colorado should leave the state in much better shape to absorb the ongoing wave of aging Baby Boomers, who themselves flocked here in the 1970s.
“Migrants to Colorado are typically younger,” Cindy DeGroen, projections demographer at the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, said at the state’s annual demography meeting in Arvada on Friday.
Nearly 45,000 more people came to Colorado than left last year, and those newcomers accounted for nearly 60 percent of the state’s population growth.
A large share of newcomers are millennials, or those born from 1980 to 1999. That generation now outnumbers Baby Boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964) in Colorado, and they tend to be more racially diverse and less likely to obtain college degrees than previous generations, said Robert Kemp, the state’s estimates demographer.
Although net migration may feel robust, it has averaged 40,000 a year since 2006, far below the 60,000 to 80,000 per year in the 1990s. What was different coming out of the 2008 recession is that in-migration never slowed, unlike after the 2001 recession, when it took a four-year breather.
All those newcomers mean that only 43.3 percent of people who call Colorado home were actually born here. Nationally, the “native rate” across all states is 58 percent.
Colorado boasts the fourth-fastest rate of population growth of any state and ranks fifth for the total number of people added.
Colorado’s population, estimated at 5.26 million in 2013, is expected to approach 8 million by 2040, with much of that growth concentrated along the Front Range.
Of the 76,386 population gain in the fiscal year ended June 30, some 51,349 came in five counties — Denver, Arapahoe, El Paso, Adams and Douglas. Brighton and Castle Rock are reporting the strongest growth rate, while Boulder and Jefferson counties are among the more constrained metro areas.
The state’s westernmost counties continue to see out-migration, but natural increases, or births outnumbering deaths, are keeping growth positive, Kemp said.
The Eastern Plains and San Luis Valley are in the toughest spot demographically, with older populations, declining birth rates and a lack of in-migration.
