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COUNTY TO SEE 20% RISE IN PEOPLE

By Amy Riggin/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Saturday, January 29, 2005 10:39 PM CST

Population projections for Jefferson County through the year 2030 predict a 20 percent increase in overall population, but a rapidly declining white population.

Jefferson County's total population is expected to climb from 84,278 in 2000 to 101,343 in 2030, according to projections recently released by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Demographic Research in the Institute for Economic Advancement. The figures are based on Census 2000 data.

The figures indicate, however, that the increase in population is markedly skewed along racial lines. The data shows that by 2030 the nonwhite population will grow from 43,438 to 90,400, a 108 percent increase. By contrast, the white population is expected to decline from 40,840 in 2000 to 10,943 in 2030, a 73 percent drop.

Jim Crider, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Alliance of Jefferson County, said that while he recognizes that such a trend has been apparent in recent years, he envisions it turning around in the long term.

"Actually, we expect that to level off and stabilize," Crider said in an interview Friday.

One of the reasons for a declining white population, Crider surmised, is the lack of local employment for highly skilled workers. He said The Alliance is actively working to try and change that.

An example of their efforts, he said, is that the organization worked early last year to ensure that the National Center for Toxicological Research at Jefferson maintained its employment level and continues to work to "ensure the future vitality" of the center.

"In the past year NCTR had to begin looking at laying off people or having employees go to part-time," Crider said. "We intervened there and those people, for the most part, have all come back. We need to begin helping NCTR to get better positioned so that its operating budget is a lot more predictable than what it has been over the last five years."

The Alliance also wants local school districts to offer more technologically oriented and science-based training at the high school level in Jefferson County.

"This would tend to keep the students that we've got here instead of seeing what we've witnessed: Students that graduate from high school either go away after they graduate or they go to college and then are recruited out of state by large firms ... because at the present time we don't have an abundance of good-paying jobs or technological-type jobs," Crider said. "That's what we're trying to do through The Alliance -- recruit industry that is more oriented toward research and technology but also to help stabilize the companies that we have."

He expects steps such as these to stabilize the decline in population.

"What I see happening as we begin to meet future needs is that those who have moved away will actually have the opportunity to come back home," Crider said.

However, in 2000 Jefferson County lagged behind the rest of the state and the nation in education.

The percentage of people who had graduated from high school was 74.8 percent, compared to 75.3 percent in Arkansas and 80.4 percent in the U.S. The percentage of people who had obtained a bachelor's degree or higher was 15.7 percent, compared to 16.7 percent in the state and 24.4 percent in the nation.

Poverty levels are another tell-tale sign.

In Jefferson County, 20.5 percent of the population was living in poverty in 2000, compared to 15.8 percent in Arkansas and 12.4 percent in the U.S.

Even though the numbers may tell a different story, Bill Ursery, a real estate broker at Hometown Realty Services who has been in the real estate business at Pine Bluff since the early 1970s, says he does not see a proportionately larger amount of whites moving out of Jefferson County compared to nonwhites. He also takes issue with long-range projections in general.

"I'd be quite skeptical of trends that appear on even a five-year projection. ... There are too many variables in the world to be able to say what is going to happen in 2030," Ursery said. "I've found the local population to be relatively consistent. The people that we lose generally are of a retirement age and they move closer to their children and we gain people through the industries that we have here.

"I find the current market stable. Certainly we lose people but we lose them of both races and we gain people by the same token."

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