Growing Again

Rick Killion edits and publishes Prairie Business, the premier business magazine in the Dakotas and Minnesota. Each monthly issue includes wonderful stories about companies and communities that are succeeding in this part of the USA. This past month’s 62 pages featured the diversity of the architecture and design of new buildings in the region.

Killion’s monthly column celebrated the fact that the population decline in ND appears to be turning around. As he says, “North Dakota’s population increased again, making it three years out of the last four for an addition of more than 7,000 people from the low of 632,620 recorded in 2003.”

He goes on, “This most recent population gain matches the growth in good jobs in the state, with an increase in the total workforce of about 6,500 per year and average of 2,700 jobs being filled each year by workers under the age of 35.”

The last part of his quote is particularly important because parts of ND have some of the oldest populations in the country and the state has to replace the older workers who are going to be retiring in the next decade.