St. Tammany NOW
St.
Tammany NOW is a curated collection of the latest economic development information and business and industry insight in our community provided by St. Tammany Corporation, the economic development organization for St. Tammany Parish. St. Tammany NOW highlights who and what makes the St. Tammany business community thrive and illustrates the opportunities to diversify and fortify our economy. In this issue, we share an overview on St. Tammany’s population and demographic makeup using the most recent parish-level data from the U.S. Census. In a threepart series called “Who is St. Tammany?,” we go in-depth into demographic, workforce and migration, and income and family trends in order to better understand our economic and population landscape. This series is part of St. Tammany Corporation’s suite of economic research publications called The AnalyST. If you find the insights in this article interesting, be sure to check out the full series at StTammanyStats.com. Understanding who we are as a community and how we are changing helps us recognize our opportunities, needs, strengths, and areas of focus. “Who is St. Tammany?” provides a deep dive into the numbers that tell our community’s story. Most people know that the Census Bureau releases official population counts every ten years. In 2020, the release of data from the Census was significant for understanding which places in the U.S. have grown, which have shrunk, and where people are choosing to live and work. This information is important because it helps us make decisions at the state and local levels about how many schools and daycare centers we need, how many hospital beds we need, where we should focus resources on building and updating roads and bridges, and other important decisions until the next full Census count.
These new numbers showed that St. Tammany’s population is now estimated to be nearly 270,000, and we added about 4,500 new residents in just one year. That averages out to 12 new residents every single day in 2021, or about 340 new residents each month. Adding 4,500 new residents in St. Tammany is also comparable to adding two new towns the size of Abita Springs in a single year. No other parish in Louisiana added more new residents during 2021, and it isn’t particularly close.
Demographic and Population Trends We learned from the 2020 Census that in 2020, St. Tammany Parish had about 265,000 residents and was the 4th fastest growing parish in the state. Only 3 other parishes saw a higher rate of growth than we did from 2010 to 2020. In fact, these numbers show that from 2010 to 2020, St. Tammany added more than 30,000 new residents. That’s eight new residents every single day, or about 250 per month, for ten years. That’s also like adding an entire new city the size of Slidell to St. Tammany Parish in just a decade. In 2022, the Census Bureau released a new data set, known as the Vintage 2021 Population Estimates, which showed how populations have shifted since the 2020 Census.
Workforce and Migration Trends The next report in our series asks the questions, “When people come to St. Tammany, where do they come from? When they leave, where do they go?” Each of these questions has two answers as we look at both workers and residents in our parish—two separate groups. Identifying commuting patterns shows us where our workforce lives and where our residents work. Census data shows that every day, more than 47,000 St. Tammany residents leave the parish to work elsewhere, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Conversely, more than 37,000 people commute into St. Tammany Parish to work, and over 51,000 people live
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EDGE February |March 2023
Source - U.S. Census Bureau
One of the most significant demographics changes shown in this report is the dramatic increase in the over-65 population in St. Tammany. The population over 65 saw a 37.9% increase from 2010-2020. This age group went from representing 12.7% of the population in 2010 with 29,634 residents to 18.1% of the population in 2020 with 47,710 residents. As the majority of people in this population cohort are typically retired empty-nesters, these numbers, combined with total population growth numbers, show the importance in investing in entertainment and leisure activities, higherend retail options, and healthcare infrastructure.