COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – For the first time since 2010, Branch County has experienced a population increase. 2014 census figures released today show the county’s population last year was 43,545. That’s 73 more people than were living in the county in 2013.
While it’s only a 17-hundredths of a percent gain, it reverses a trend that developed beginning in 2010. The next year, the census indicated that Branch County’s population loss was 1,278. The drop slowed to 130 fewer in 2012 and minus-284 in 2013. It would take a major turnaround to get back to the 2010 level, requiring more than a 3-and-a-half percent jump in population. The number that year was 45,164.
Branch County was one of 35 counties in Michigan that had higher populations in 2014 compared to the year before. The number of people in the state has increased now for 3 straight years, after having declined annually since 2004.
