Governor Tom Vilsack is skeptical of new Census Bureau data which shows an outmigration of older Iowans and only a slight, point-six (0.6) percent increase in Iowa’s overall population.Vilsack says he has “very serious concerns about the accuracy of Census data.” Vilsack says Iowa’s workforce has grown by tens of thousands of workers in the past three years, but that’s not reflected in the new Census report. Vilsack says that’s why he has serious questions about whether the Census Bureau has accurately counted all the people in the state. Newly-released statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate about 25-hundred Iowans over the age of 65 left the state in the past three years. Vilsack says he does not accept the premise that there’s an exodus. He says the numbers that are available to do not reflect a mass exodus, and Vilsack says a large part of the reason folks over the age of 65 leave Iowa is because of the weather, like today, which is snowy, cold and slippery. The Governor says there’s not much he or anyone else can do to change the weather.
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