Northeastern Minnesota may have turned the corner.

If trends continue, there will be more people in Northeastern Minnesota in 30 years, according to new state demographer estimates.

The state's latest studies predict that the region will grow because of in-migration, a turnaround from nearly 80 years of reverse flow.

Growth will be slow -- very slow.

The eight-county Arrowhead should add about 50,000 people by 2030, or 15 percent growth. That's less than 1 percent per year. And it's so slow that St. Cloud, feeding off metro growth, will be larger than the Duluth-Superior metro area in 2030.

Nevertheless, the news is better than before. Earlier population projections generally called for fewer people in the Northland and a much older population than elsewhere in the country.

Wisconsin's state demographer is scheduled to release projections early next year.

An unexpected finding is the much better outlook for young workers.

The state demographer predicted that the number of people between age 25 and 29 will increase 17 percent between now and 2030, and the number of people in their early 30s will rise 13 percent.

"That'd be great news," said Tony Barrett, an economics professor at the College of St. Scholastica. "That's your economic go-getter cohort."

The equivalent of one-third and two-thirds of every generation to come of age since World War II has left the region, a 2001 News Tribune analysis concluded.

The effects of such out-migration are hard to measure.

MORE YOUNG WORKERS

Young workers are elsewhere, perhaps starting businesses they may have started in the Northland, but there's no way to know whether they could have started those businesses in the Northland.

But demographers also say losing the young, over time, means there are fewer workers in a region to support the elderly.

As we age and drop out of the work force, we depend on working-age adults to fix streets, do the plumbing, pump gas and fuel the economy, they say.

The problem can be as tangible as finding enough nurses to staff hospitals and nursing homes -- one long-term, serious concern in the region's growing health care industry.

The Journal of the American Medical Association projects the nation will have20 percent fewer nurses nationwide than it will need by 2020 -- and the gap could be a larger problem in areas with fewer young adults, such as the Northland.

Although no one has studied people who have left the Northland, nationwide studies generally conclude that higher-educated and higher-income families tend to be more mobile.

Reversing that trend would be a major change.

Some people are skeptical it will happen.

Sen. Doug Johnson, DFL-Tower, has engaged in economic development during his 31 years in the Minnesota Legislature.

"If it's true, it's encouraging," he said of the prediction that more young workers will stay. "But there's so many unknowns about our naturalresource-driven economy that I'm a little skeptical."

Johnson didn't run for re-election, and he can now watch the region's destiny unfold from his house on the shores of Lake Vermilion. Lakes such as Vermilion are fueling some of the region's growth. Early retirees and the wealthy are moving to lakeshores.

That trend "is healthy, but there's a continued exodus of the young people and the future entrepreneurs out of our region," Johnson said.

While not solid, it's possible the Northland will see a growing young population, said Tom Gillaspy, the Minnesota state demographer who oversaw the new projections, which were released last month and are the first based on the 2000 census.

For one thing, the sons and daughters of baby boomers are coming of age. Boomers, born of the World War II generation, are the largest generation in the history of the United States. Their children are the second-largest and now coming out of college.

LARGER FORCES

Also helping the Northland are the spillover benefits from immigration to Minnesota. The state attracted more people than left in the 1990s -- the first substantial in-migration since 1940.

Gillaspy also said the 2000 census was more accurate than one taken during the 1990s. That means fewer people were missed during the decennial count, and that could artificially inflate population growth.

But that isn't the whole story.

"There are some very positive things going on in the Arrowhead, and this is reflecting some of those very positive things," he said.

But while the Northland's demographic future is brighter, it's still a fairly dim glow.

Gillaspy's office found that the Twin Cities metro area will grow fastest and the most during the next 30 years, not surprisingly.

And the Northland will have to work even harder if it wants to catch up. The projections illustrate the fact that, despite our pride regarding scenic beauty, areas with lots of smaller lakes are likely to do better.

In fact, every region surrounding the Arrowhead will grow faster, according to the projections.

The Brainerd-Bemidji lakes region is projected to grow42 percent by 2030; the Fergus Falls area 22 percent; and the Lake of the Woods region36 percent. All of those regions are growing faster than the Northland.

Little Aitkin County, once a backwater of closed farms and clear-cut forests, shows what can happen with focused economic development and good natural amenities.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the county was projected to have one of thefastest-declining and oldest populations in the region. Instead, it grew 23 percent in the 1990s, adding 2,900 people. The demographer projects65 percent growth in the next 30 years, bringing its population to 25,270.

The growth came from recruiting small manufacturers and lakeshore development that is moving up the Highway 169 corridor past Brainerd, said David Hasskamp, director of Aitkin County Growth.

The group is a nonprofit started during the mid-1980s to encourage business development. It successfully recruited some small manufacturers, such as a company that makes snowmobile trailers, Hasskamp said.

Its efforts helped create about 600 jobs, he said, a big boost in a county with 12,000 people in 1990.

Meanwhile, people moving out of the Twin Cities to lakes in the Brainerd area began discovering Aitkin County's affordable lakeshores.

"It's amazing how, once you get this base economy started, the energy that it has and the huge spending that comes out of it," Hasskamp said. "I think this is going to continue until well into the future."