Census Reveals 5 Trends That Matter to Your Business in 2012

By Rieva Lesonsky

The 2010 Census data, released in 2011, was a gold mine of information for business owners. But what information will be the most important to your business going forward? The Brookings Institution picked out its top five trends rom the 2010 Census, and I thought I’d share them here.

1. Slowing population growth: The 2000s saw the slowest growth in the United States in 70 years–just 9.7 percent, or 27.3 million people, were added from 2000 to 2010. The decline is a result of aging baby boomers, slower U.S. economic growth and declining immigration. However, the U.S. is still one of the fastest-growing industrialized nations. Growth was highest in the South and Midwest and lowest in the North and East; suburbs grew faster than cities. Despite the housing crash disproportionately affecting the Sunbelt, these areas are still fast-growing.
2. Staying put: In the boom years of the 1950s, nearly 20 percent of Americans moved every year; in 2011, just 11.6 percent did. Aging boomers and higher homeownership rates are part of the reason for the slowdown, along with recession, dwindling home prices and tighter credit restrictions. For businesses, this means areas that relied on immigration for their work force may find it harder to get employees; on the plus side, cities that suffered from “brain drain” may find more of their best and brightest staying put.
3. Minority becoming majority: Not quite, but 50 percent of U.S. infants are now non-white, and non-whites (primarily Hispanics and Asians) accounted for 92 percent of U.S. population growth in the 2000s. Foreign-born people account for almost 13 percent of the population. These minority and immigrant populations are also moving into the suburbs in greater numbers as segregation declines.
4. Aging boomers: Baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are now fully middle-aged or older. America’s 45-and-over population grew over 18 times faster than the under-45 population in the 2000s. The aging of the boomers, and the fact that younger age groups are waiting longer to get married and have children, means just 20 percent of U.S. households consist of married couples with children under 18 (compared to 40 percent in 1970). Large cities are increasingly defined by whether their number of young people is growing or declining, and many areas find themselves in a culture clash—for instance, Arizona’s senior population is more than 80 percent white, while its children are more than 60 percent minority.
5. Poverty grows: The 2000s was the first census decade on record in which real median household income declined. Some 15.3 percent of Americans were in poverty. Nearly all of the 100 largest metro areas had lower incomes in 2010 than in 2000. But the recession wasn’t all to blame: The Sunbelt, manufacturing cities and the Southeast had all seen dramatic increases in poverty even before 2008. In addition, poverty is hitting the suburbs; the number of suburban residents in poverty rose 53 percent over the decade.

How will these trends affect your business going forward? You can access much more data from the Census at American FactFinder to see specific trends for your region of the country, state and city.

Image by Flickr user comedy_nose (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Small Business, small business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.