What Does Mid-Point Census Estimate Mean For Pittsburgh?

What Does Mid-Point Census Estimate Mean For Pittsburgh?

The 2015 estimated population counts for incorporated places was released this past week (this table shows changes for places of 50,000 or more people) showed a slight decline for the City of Pittsburgh from 2014 of 1,374 people, and, based on the official 2010 census count of 305,704, a decline of 1,313 people.  City officials don’t agree with the estimates as indicated by comments from this article which is similar to the comments made by the County Executive in March when the metro area estimates were released.

So where did Pittsburgh stand with mid-decade estimates in the previous two decades?  The data from the Census’ historical estimates data shows the following:

1990 official Census count: 369,879

1995 estimate: 353,781

2000 official Census count: 334,563

2005 estimate: 316,718

From Census to estimate, the previous two decades had drops of 16,098 and 17,845 respectively.  If we eliminate the estimates and just go Census to Census, the 1990s change was 35,316 and 2000s was 28,859.  Sure, there was a lot of development in Pittsburgh in those decades as well, but it did not translate into population growth.

Based on the Census estimate data, if we look at cities of roughly the same population count as Pittsburgh starting from the 2010 Census (cities that had a range of 320,000 to 290,000 people) only St. Louis reported a drop by the 2015 estimate.