New Census Numbers

From the Census Bureau (I'm too lazy to find the link so I'll just post data):

Metro area 2000 2006 growth %
Albuquerque 729,653 816,811 11.9%
Las Cruces 174,682 193,888 11.0%
Santa Fe 129,287 142,407 10.1%
Farmington 113,801 126,473 11.1%
Gallup 74,798 71,875 -3.9%

I really thought we were growing much more rapidly with our recent 1.8%-3.6% job growth the last couple of years. I guess the economy in 2001, 2002 and 2003 really had quite an affect. Even so, that's an average yearly gain of 14,526 people. From older numbers I have seen, the census used to show a population of 712,000 for the Albuquerque metro area in 2000. That would have given us an average annual growth of 17,469. It'll be interesting to see how much natural growth that is versus in-migration from out of state. Now if we could curb the brain drain we are currently witnessing, we could potentially see growth rates on par with Austin, Raleigh and the other big gainers of the decade. I don't support growth for the sake of growth, but it's an educated, mobile population that we are losing. I believe our ability to retain such a demographic is partially the key to correcting some of our shortcomings. I know that's a vague statement but I'll leave it at that for now.