Patrick Jones: Modest population growth continued in Spokane during the pandemic

The pandemic didn’t deal a knockout blow to population growth in Spokane County. It didn’t confer bragging rights, either.

A late-June release by Washington’s Office of Financial Management (OFM) estimated that Spokane County’s population grew by 5,000, or about 1% over 2020. The gain was about twice as large as the national rate, but it was 30% less than our fast-growing state of Washington. And it was roughly a third less than the average of the prior three years here, as Spokane Trends indicator 0.1.1 reveals.

Exactly how the county grew remains a bit of a puzzle. Population estimation rests on two components: 1) a “natural increase,” or births minus deaths, and 2) net in-migration. For the 2020-21 comparison, OFM demographers pegged the natural increase at about 970, slightly down from the prior year.

In the Western U.S., population growth is largely due to people voting with their feet, or to in-migration. This measure is a remainder from demographers’ estimate of overall population, minus the natural increase. But this year that’s not the case.

OFM has stated that net in-migration over the 2020-21 period amounted to a trickle, at 678. That’s about 10% of its average amount over the past four years. This implies the two components of population growth don’t add up to 5,000.

How can that be? It’s due to the once-in-a-decade reconciliation between OFM’s estimates and the decennial count by United States census. The latter put Washington’s 2020 population at about 49,000 more than OFM’s estimates. To resolve the issue, OFM has allocated the difference over all 39 counties based on their population shares of 2020. For Spokane, this meant an approximate 3,500 residents.

The number is added to the original OFM total population estimate, giving the county a population of 527,600. But nothing was added to the components, in particular to net migration.

As it officially stands, Spokane County didn’t attract too many new residents during the pandemic year. Yet, even if we added the reconciliation number to the OFM estimate of in-migration, the sum would be a little greater than 4,100, considerably less than any of the prior four years.

Why might that be? The obvious reason is the pandemic. After the initial shock of the stay-home orders, Americans did move. But initial U.S. Post Office data seems to show that most didn’t move too far. The suburbs and exurbs appeared to gain at the expense of central cities; most of the moves, however, were by local, not out-of-county, residents.

There’s a second pandemic reason, at least in Spokane. In counties with a dominant higher education presence, OFM population estimates actually show negative population growth last year. That includes the counties of Kittitas (Central Washington University) and Whitman (Washington State University). OFM estimates that their populations dropped by 740 and 2,480, respectively.

Spokane County’s population isn’t nearly as dependent on higher education students as those two counties, but their presence is not trivial. The combined fall enrollment of the four nonprofit higher education institutions in the county was most recently 24,500. That’s about 5% of the population. While Gonzaga and Whitworth continued face-to-face instruction, EWU and WSU did not.

For students who were in Spokane in April 2020 but not in April 2021, they “out-migrated.” This year’s population estimate for Cheney, for example, showed a net decrease of over 500.

So, more residents likely came to the shores of the county during the pandemic year than reflected in the net number of 678. Some were likely from out of state. But they hardly made a flood. Driver’s licenses surrenders in Spokane County to the Washington Department of Licensing show a 2020 total 8,412. That is down several hundred from 2018 and 2019.

Further, the rate of population gain here, while not trivial, placed last among the other major metro areas of Eastern Washington: the Tri-Cities, Yakima and the greater Wenatchee area. Growth rates in those communities were 2.1%, 1.2% and 2.3%, respectively. If pandemic flight from the central Puget Sound to Eastern Washington did take place, it was more likely to the Tri-Cities and the Wenatchee area.

The pattern of growth within Spokane County somewhat resembled the exodus to suburbs and exurbs of the largest metro areas. The city of Spokane gained 0.8% the past year. Two communities on the periphery – Deer Park and Liberty Lake – gained far more. Population gains there were 3.6% and 5.0%, respectively. Of course, these two, plus Airway Heights, have been the new centers of population for the past decade.

The resumption of face-to-face learning at Spokane higher education this fall will push the county’s numbers higher for 2022.

It is also likely that net in-migration, whether from in state or out of state, will pick up over the coming months. That is, provided there are enough dwellings to house them.

Patrick Jones, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Institute for Public Policy & Economic Analysis at Eastern Washington University.