According to Liz Farmer at the Washington Examiner:
The District’s population grew faster than any state in the nation this year, an influx led by Americans moving into the thriving city, new Census Bureau data show.
The population grew by 2.7 percent from April 2010 to July 2011, according to data the Census Bureau released Wednesday. The increase of more than 16,000 residents already equals half of the city’s total population increase during the 10 years before April 2010.
Now, although the increase was “led by the number of births, not people moving in”, slightly “over half of the city’s new residents moved from another state over the last year, according to the figures.” Here’s one clue as to why this is going on:
D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray noted the swell in 2011 marked the first time since the early 1940s that the District has led the nation in population growth by percentage. Last year, the city posted its first 10-year population gain since the 1950 census.
Emphasis added. What was going on in the early 1940s? Oh yeah, the federal government was expanding in order to fight World War II. And there’s this:
Anirban Basu, founder and chief executive officer of Sage Policy Group in Baltimore, said migration within the states tends to be driven by the job climate and federal spending in D.C. helped sustain it during and after the recession.
Guess those Obama supporters who have been insisting that their guy hasn’t increased the size of government weren’t aware of this fact.
*since census.
People go where the (government) jobs are.