Montana growth slows but withstands recession

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY
Posted 14m ago |

Montana enjoyed the windfall of the housing boom but didn't suffer from the decline as severely as other fast-growing parts of the country, 2010 Census numbers out Tuesday show.

There are fewer wealthy Californians who can cash in on their expensive homes to move to Big Sky country than before the housing bust, but there are few vacant homes and foreclosure signs ruining the state's legendary landscape.

"We don't have speculative development," says Mary Craigle, chief of Montana's Census & Economic Information Center. "The lending community in Montana is very conservative."

Bozeman, home of Montana State University and a flourishing center for small high-tech companies, attracted young families and grew almost 36% to 37,280 from 2000 to 2010.

MONTANA: Local county, city data
CENSUS NUMBERS: Interactive map shows your state, county, locality
Billings, the state's largest city, was up 16% and topped the 100,000 mark (104,170).

"Since 2008 and 2009, the population is not going up as much," says Susan Ockert, senior economist at the Montana Department of Commerce. "Before the recession, people were able to leave California with retirement money, sell their house and buy something much bigger at a lower price."

Flathead County's lakefront living attracted retirees with high incomes and grew 22% to 90,928. Gallatin County, a skier's paradise, was up 32% to 89,513.

Despite the slowdown of the past four years, Montana remains one of only two states without a budget deficit this fiscal year. (North Dakota is the other.) The state's growth rate of 9.7% matched the nation's.

Lincoln County, in the northwest corner of the state near the Idaho and Canadian borders, has the state's highest unemployment rate, 18.1%. That's where wood-product manufacturers, hit hard by the housing slump, are based.

The downturn there has been offset by energy production on the eastern side of the state that includes oil, coal and wind — an industry that is more recession-proof.

Montana remains 90% white and non-Hispanic. The Hispanic population grew 58% to 28,565 but makes up less than 3% of the population. American Indians and Alaska Natives now are more than 6% of the state's population of 989,415.

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