Utah is the fastest-growing state in the US, according to the World Population Review. Since the 1990s, the state has added about half a million people every decade.
A new report from the Kem C Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah predicts that this rate of increase is expected to stay roughly consistent over the next four decades — but the source of population growth isn’t going to be high birth rates.
“Net migration overall throughout the next 40 years is going to play more and more of a role,” said Mallory Bateman, the director of demographic research at the institute.
Bateman said that while many factors drive population change, job availability often determines net migration.
“Migration is really connected with the economic side of the work," Bateman said, "because people move for jobs, and so for the bulk of the state, the movers are coming through increases in the job numbers. We don't think [the number of] people born in the state is going to be enough to fill those jobs.”
The institute projects that economic development will create 1.2 million jobs in Utah by 2065.
“It's a shift to a more service-based economy," Bateman said, "so you have things like healthcare. When you have an older population, you've got some really different needs there.”
While currently about one in eight Utahns are 65 or older, that number will increase to one in four by 2065. The increasing age of Utah’s population mirrors national and global trends and will create about 150,000 new jobs. And as Utah’s birth rate continues to fall, most of these will be filled by people from out of state.
Bateman says that it's important to keep the inherent uncertainty of population projections in mind.
“[Projections] are based on a set of assumptions we have now," she said, "and the migration side is really impacted by policy decisions and decisions outside of what we can model.”
Policy changes or dramatic events that can't be predicted will change long-term predictions, which is why the institute updates its predictions every few years.
Bateman says these projections are made publicly available on the Gardner Institute website to help inform Utah’s trajectory.
“Our role is to produce these numbers," Bateman said, "and share them with different agencies so they can see how it hits with their services, their infrastructure. And since we're a place that has grown consistently since we started being counted, this is a helpful tool to help people think about what the future might look like. Data is infrastructure. It doesn't look like a bridge, but it helps inform where a bridge might go, right?”