From the Star Ledger:

Few pick Jersey as their new home

If you followed the money last year, chances are you found yourself in Texas.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, which today releases its annual county-by-county population estimates for the nation, oil-rich Texas was home to the highest total population gain, adding nearly a half-million new residents to its rolls. As gas prices soared between July 2006 and July 2007, Texas boomed.

“With the energy economy, a lot of money was flowing in,” said James Hughes, dean of the Bloustein School of Public Policy and Planning at Rutgers University. “Texas is headquarters to Exxon Mobil — all those dollars were playing a part,” in luring new workers to the Lone Star state.

New Jersey, on the other hand, continued its pattern of sluggish population gains. As a whole, the nation is growing at a rate five times faster than the Garden State, which ranked 43rd in rate of growth last year, with an overall gain of fewer than 20,000 people.

“It’s been a long time since we made significant gains,” Hughes said. “New Jersey has been lagging the nation since the second half of the 1970s. Between 1950 and 1970, we were growing faster than the nation because people from New York and Philadelphia were suburbanizing into New Jersey. Now we’re a mature, highly developed state.”

Only two New Jersey counties are expanding at a rate higher than the national average of 1 percent: Gloucester experienced a 1.58 percent one-year gain and Somerset 1.09 percent. Middlesex had the highest absolute growth with a net gain of 5,258 new residents last year.

“We’re seeing stronger growth down in Gloucester because it is accessible to Philadelphia and housing costs are relatively cheap,” Hughes said. “Middlesex is in the middle of the state and is highly accessible for jobs, plus there’s been a lot of revitalization going on there, so it’s not surprising.”

Hughes accounts for Somerset’s gains, in part, to a rise in age-restricted communities, especially in Bridgewater and Franklin. The same holds for Ocean County.

“Ocean County was third in terms of rate of growth, for two reasons,” said Hughes, “the number of new age-restricted housing units, but also it’s an easy commute up the Parkway to Middlesex, or up I-95 to Trenton and Princeton. Plus, housing is cheaper.”
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Five New Jersey counties experienced population declines last year, according to the Census: Burlington, Essex, Hudson and Union all showed a rate of loss of less than 1 percent, with only Cape May County registering a minus 1.22 percent loss of residents.
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Hughes does not expect the population rates to change much in the coming years, although retiring Baby Boomers will probably be leaving the state in greater numbers.

“Demographic trends are deeply embedded and rarely show sharp changes,” he said. “They take a long time to appear.”