We're Number One...

in terms of people moving out. More people moved out of Jackson County over the past ten years than any other county in southern Illinois. Anderson County was number two with a full quarter of the county's population decamping. In fact, Williamson County was the only one to add  any population and that a measly 700 people. Of course, Jackson and Anderson are in (good) company as 93 out of 102 of the counties in the state lost population. Even mighty Chicago lost 1.2% of its population

Carbondale Popluation

In case you are interested, here are the numbers for Carbondale' population based on census counts since 1990. We hit a high that correlated with the high point of SIUC's attendance then slowly worked back up, while the university's attendance consistently worked its way down.

Carbondale Population Over the Decades

with the interest in the upcoming census, I decided to take a look back at the population of Carbondale over the past several censuses

1940--8550 
1950--10,920  +21.7 %
1960--14,670  +25.5%
1970--22,816  +55%
1980--26,414 +15.8 %
1990--27033 +2.3%
2000--25.597  -5.3%
2010--25,902  +1.2%
2017--25,899 (est.)  0.00%

The population of Carbondale doubled between 1950 and 1970, primarily because of people drawn here by SIUC. Not by coincidence, I would bet, the town's population peaked the same year SIUC's did and, while Carbondale has not seen the same decline in numbers than SIUC has, the town is only about 3 times as large as it was prior to WW2.

Population Level

This is interesting. Despite the sprawl of the city, Carbondale's population has actually grown by a bit less than 12% since 1970 and had actually dropped 4.5% since 1990, which, if I remember correctly, coincides with the peak years of SIUC attendance.

Growth?

The city is touting its growth of 2.4% between July 2000 and July 2008. while any growth is good, that works out to an average .3% per year. That could easily be due to the natural growth of the city, rather than any influx created by the new building Asst. Manager Baity cites.