Houston metro area continues torrid growth

The Houston area continues to grow - and grow dramatically - with the region and state leading the nation in boosting its population, according to new U.S. Census data released Thursday.

The metro area gained the most residents in the country, more than 156,300, between 2013 and 2014. Most of that growth, 89,000, was in Harris County, which added more people than any other county in the nation.

The region's growth reflects what's occurring as a whole in Texas. Of the 10 counties in the nation gaining the most people last year, four were in the Lone Star State, which itself added more than 450,000 people last year, more than any other state.

"It's a continuation of what we've been seeing with Texas experiencing very rapid growth," said Steve Murdock, a former Census Bureau director who heads the Hobby Center for the Study of Texas at Rice University.

The Houston metro area grew the 11th-fastest in the nation, trailing Austin, Odessa and Midland, according to the Census data.

A cheap cost-of-living and roaring economy keeps drawing people here, and has for nearly a decade and a half, as the city adds jobs at a furious pace. In fact, since Houston came out of the recession in January 2010, there have been only one or two months when it didn't lead the state in job creation, said Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership, an economic development organization.

97,500 new jobs

Still, the data reflects a year when the region experienced one of its strongest economic performances ever and most significantly, before crude prices fell drastically.

In the period measured by the Census, Jankowski said the region created 97,500 new jobs, almost equal to the number of residents who moved here from elsewhere over the same 12 month-span. Last year, more than 98,100 people moved to the Houston area, about one-third of them from abroad and the rest from elsewhere in the United States.

Nevertheless, the oil slump, and resulting job losses, won't greatly dull Houston's growth, Jankowski said, because the region has a much more diversified economy now than in the 1980s oil crisis - the only period in history when the area actually lost population. A revised forecast predicts between 30,000 and 50,000 jobs will be created this year, Jankowski said, down from the 63,000 estimated before the crude fallout.

"We've been beating the pants off everyone for so long, and that's what's been drawing people … the only place you could find work for a long time was Houston," he said. "With the economy cooling off, we're not the same magnet we have been, but we'll still draw people."

Even given a dip in job creation, slightly more than one-third of the metropolitan area's growth was due to new births.

In the county, about half of the growth was births and the rest migration from other states and abroad. Recessions don't typically translate into fewer births unless they are severe, said Lloyd Potter, the state's demographer.

"That growth is not likely to slow," he said.

'Manage that growth'

In comparison to many other places in the country, growth here is exploding. The Houston and Dallas metro areas were the only two to add more than 100,000 people last year. The three fastest-growing large counties were also in Texas - Fort Bend, Montgomery and Williamson - which grew by at least 3.8 percent.

Growth is generally considered a good thing, boosting the economy and spurring development. But without proper preparation, it can lead to clogged roads and schools and other negative fallouts, said Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor and founding director of its Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

"We have to figure out a way to manage that growth so that we don't see a deterioration in the quality of life," he said.