A new report suggests Utah is losing its power as a magnet for people from out of state. If the 1990's was the decade when people flocked here to live and work, this could be the decade when they stop, or even start to leave.

News Specialist John Hollenhorst joins us with more on Utah's population. John, has our growth curve flattened out?

Not by a long shot. We still have to find room for lots of new people because the stork keeps making deliveries. Babies keep coming. In record numbers, actually.

But the other component of growth, people moving into the state, may be grinding to a halt.

You do remember the '90's don't you? There was a construction boom. New and improved highways. More and bigger hotels. The Olympic dream was beginning to gel into reality. People moved here in droves, well over 200,000 of them in the 1990's. About a third were minorities. Nearly half were from other countries.

PAM PERLICH/UTAH POPULATION ESTIMATES COMMITTEE: "ACCORDING TO THE 2000 CENSUS, WE HAVE 100,000 MORE FOREIGN-BORN PEOPLE HERE THAN WE DID IN THE YEAR 1990."

Pam Perlich crunches numbers for a living and helped prepare a new report that quantifies the trends.

That wave of in-migration has crested and is dropping off fast. In the last year, less than 15,000 people moved here, down from the annual peak of 30,000 in the mid-'90's. The reasons: Those big job-producing projects of the '90's are gone. The Olympics are history. The post 9-11 economy is in a deep slump.

The Utah version of the American Dream turned sour for some as the state lost 17,000 jobs in the last year.

PAM PERLICH/UTAH POPULATION ESTIMATES COMMITTEE: "ALTHOUGH WHEN YOU CREATE JOBS, PEOPLE COME RATHER QUICKLY. WHEN THE JOBS GO AWAY, PEOPLE DON'T NECESSARILY JUST DROP EVERYTHING AND LEAVE."

Will the in-migration trend reverse and become a mass exodus? Perlich doesn't expect it anytime soon.

PAM PERLICH/UTAH POPULATION ESTIMATES COMMITTEE: "WHERE YOU'VE GOT A GENERALIZED RECESSION IN THE REGION, THEN THERE'S NO PARTICULAR PLACE FOR PEOPLE TO GO. RIGHT?"

Right. But it's wrong to suppose we can stop making plans for more schools, more traffic, more everything, except breathing room and wide-open spaces.

PAM PERLICH/UTAH POPULATION ESTIMATES COMMITTEE: "GROWTH HAS SLOWED AS FAR AS IN-MIGRATION IS CONCERNED. BUT WE ARE AT RECORD BIRTHS."

And that's the bigger picture to always keep in mind. Tomorrow there will be more of us. The next day, even more. And barring some dramatic shift in Utah behavior, a few years from now there will be a lot more of us.

Sept. 18, 2002