A funny thing happened while I was working on last week’s blog post on migration to and from the Duluth-Superior metropolitan statistical area (hereafter referred to as the Duluth MSA). As I was calculating the growth in the population from 2010 to 2020 using the Census Bureau’s recently released decennial census numbers, I noticed something odd. According to the decennial census numbers, the population of the Duluth MSA had grown from 279,771 in 2010 to 291,638 in 2020—an increase of 11,867 residents, or 4.2%.
Maybe this doesn’t seem very notable, but our office just completed an analysis on the changes in the region’s population for the recent Regional Economic Indicators Forum, and I knew that the population in the area had remained relatively stable over the past decade. Only a handful of counties experienced growth rates of more than 5%, and most of those were counties with already small populations. The largest county in the region, St. Louis County, only added five residents over the ten-year period.
To add to my confusion, after pulling the 2020 population estimates for St. Louis and Carlton Counties in Minnesota and Douglas County, Wisconsin, the sum of the three counties did not equal the estimate for the MSA. Something was most definitely wrong.
A bit of detective work led me to the answer: In September 2018, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that Lake County had officially joined the Duluth MSA.
For reference, an MSA is the formal definition of a region that consists of a city and surrounding communities that are linked by social and economic factors. When the OMB first defined the country’s metropolitan statistical areas in 1950, the Duluth MSA included St. Louis County and Douglas County. Carlton County was added to the MSA in 2003.
OMB qualifies a county as an outlying county of an MSA if it meets the following commuting requirements: (a) At least 25 percent of the workers living in the county work in the central county or counties of the MSA; or (b) At least 25 percent of the employment in the county is accounted for by workers who reside in the central county or counties of the MSA.
Sure enough, in 2019 27.4% of Lake County residents were employed in either St. Louis County or Douglas County, and 25.4% of the jobs in Lake County were filled by residents of one of the two primary counties. The percentages for the two measures have fluctuated over the years, dropping below 25% at times, but with the exception of 2017, one or both measures have consistently remained above 25% since 2009.
To complicate matters, it turns out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—the entity responsible for collecting and distributing data on unemployment, employment, labor force participation, and other measures—is still using the former definition for the Duluth-Superior MSA.
An inquiry to the BBER’s professional association listserv, helped clarify the discrepancy. As Dave Iaia, Executive Director for U.S. Regional Economic Service at IHS Markit explained, “Previously the OMB used to update the metro definitions one every 10 years (after the decennial census) but just added this mid-decade one for the first time. Many agencies moved right away to the new definitions because their underlying data is at the county level, and they can re-aggregate easily.
“The BLS monthly CES data, however, is a different ball of wax,” Iaia, added, “as it’s a probability sample of employers throughout the MSA, and they need to redo the scope, adjust the history. That takes a while. They initially planned to move to the new definitions, but then pulled back and later announced that they would stay with their previous practice of only updating their MSAs every decade.
“OMB will probably announce new definitions, based on Census 2020, around 2023. And then BLS needs a year to adapt.”
Frankly, I was shocked to find out that the change had occurred more than three years ago. After all, it is my job to analyze data on the Northeast region, and somehow this important change had gone unnoticed! However, searching Google, I found that many state, local, and even national websites were still using the former definition with the original three counties. And some of the other data professionals I spoke with in the area were also unaware that the change had occurred.
This made me think that it may be necessary to spread the word far and wide that our beloved MSA, formerly the three counties of St. Louis, Carlton, and Douglas, now has a new member. Welcome to the MSA, Lake County! We’re happy to have you.
So, if you are data savvy, tell me: Did you know about the change to the Duluth-Superior MSA? If so, when did you find out and how? If (like me) you were unaware, who do you plan to tell first?