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Population Growth in Prince George

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During the past few months we have heard a number of people, including local political candidates, tell us about how much of a population growth we are going to see over the next few years. This is of course, a topic of interest to any person operating a business in the region, as this population growth will certainly impact business growth and competition in the future. The problem businesses face is being able to predict with some accuracy just how big the potential growth will likely to be, if there is growth at all. 

Some of the predictions we have heard include the following: the population in Prince George doubling by 2010, all the way up to a population of 200,000 people by 2020. I have even heard a third party comment that Prince George was going to see a population of 300,000 by 2020. No matter which scenario we look at, these predictions are telling us that the population in Prince George is going to grow by at least 80,000 in five years. At the extreme end of the predictions, we are expected to see 220,000 more people living in Prince George over the next fifteen years. 

First lets see what these projections actually represent for actual population growth for Prince George on a yearly basis based on a straight-line growth rate. Using a current population for Prince George of 80,000 people:
1) 80,000 people in 5 years gives us 16,000 people per year. (20% growth per year)
2) 120,000 people in 15 years gives us 8,000 people per year. (10% growth per year)
3) 220,000 people in 15 years gives us 14,667 people per year. (18.3% growth per year)

While these predictions provide interesting coffee shop talk, they should be compared to some historic data in order to provide some benchmarking information. Recent population estimates show that Prince George has seen a population growth rate of almost 1.6% per year (1300 people) over the last two years. We should also note that these past two years have seen significant economic growth in the city and this would certainly be considered representative of future population growth forecasts. For additional comparison, we note that the growth rate in the Fraser-Fort George Regional District over that same time period was almost identical at 1.5% per year. 

Thus, we can ascertain that even the smallest growth rate of 8,000 people in one year, never mind being sustained over a number of years, is highly unlikely. However, if this growth rate was met, there are other issues that would certainly hinder the City of Prince George, such as the following housing issue.

As noted above, the minimum prediction is showing that we are predicting a yearly growth of 8,000 people per year for the next 15 years. This can also be viewed as 2,000 new families moving to Prince George each year, based on an average of four people per household. In other words, Prince George Home Builders will have to build 2,000 new housing units per year in order to keep up with the added demand.
However, since 1991, Prince George has had 4,700 housing units built, of which 500 of those have been constructed in the past 4 years. During the past fourteen years, Prince George has on average seen 337 housing units constructed per year. This includes apartments, single family and multi-family units. During the past four years Prince George has averaged 125 housing units per year. Compare that with the 2,000 units Prince George will require based on the most conservative estimate listed above. We can very quickly see that if Prince George did experience the predicted population growth, tent cities could become part of our skyline. 

So just what can we expect to see for population growth in Prince George? Both economic and population growth in Prince George is generated by natural resource extraction and production, with post secondary education and some tourism thrown in for diversity. However, almost everything done here is a result of working with natural resources. Even our growing tech industry relies heavily on the resource companies for work. It is unlikely that this natural resource dependency is going to change over the next few years, but as we see the continued demand for these resources rise, Prince George will continue to be the service center for the region. This is especially true for the coal, metals, oil and gas industries. 

However, we tend to forget that Northern British Columbia is a very large geographic region with numerous locations for people to settle. This means that Prince George is not always the city of choice for people who are working in areas located outside our immediate vicinity. Thus, Prince George is likely to see a growth rate of 1% to 3% over the next five to ten years, as we continue to be the capital of Northern BC. 

-Myron Gordon owns TMSG Management Services Group, which provides management and financial services to growing businesses. 




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