Population report Q2 2010

The Statcan quarterly population report is released today. Get your pdf here. This is always covered breathlessly in the local media, picking out data points that confirm the well-known fact that not only does everyone WANT to live here, they actually ARE moving here. Beyond confirming our own natural attractiveness, it also apparently provides some justification for our rising house prices.

Some context.

First, net migrants from other provinces is barely over zero. In fact, we have just barely gained back what was lost from 1998-2003. In TOTAL since Q1 1998, we are up a net 6,118 bodies from interprovincial migration.

Next, immigration. Immigration is doing fine. We are at the same level in terms of number of bodies that we reached in the mid 1990s. As a percent of population, it is lower than the mid-90s.
Combine these together and throw the natural growth (births - deaths) into the mix and you get total pop growth. Here it is. For new bodies, we have a cyclical peak in the late 90s, but lower than previous cyclical peaks. As a percent of population, however, this cyclical peak was around half of previous peaks--and lower than previous troughs!

How remarkable the 2000s were for population growth can be made clear by ranking the 5-year periods from 1960 to 2009 by population growth. 2000-04 and 2005-2009 were dead last. So much for the population boom.