[Costello:] I don't know why they're not playing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Welcome back to The Most News in the Morning. It's 17 minutes past the hour. That means it is time for "Minding Your Business."
[Holmes:] And something here that I don't think it's an understatement to say that you are geeked up about this story. Literally, you are geeked up.
[Christine Romans, Cnn Business Correspondent:] I love population statistics.
[Holmes:] Who doesn't?
[Romans:] Seriously. I love to look how people move in this country, why they move, how they come in, where there is growth, where the economy look, we have new population statistics from the Census Bureau.
[Costello:] I'm going out and getting my census form right now!
[Romans:] Listen, it's really exciting stuff because this is our country right. It's full of people and everyone is different but there are interesting patterns to watch. We've found some new data for you. This is the last real gauge we're going to get before the big census, the 2010 census. This is what census is saying about the fastest growing regions in the country. Wyoming population growth up 2 percent over the past year, has about 544,000 people now. Utah has about 2.8 million people. It is up 2.1 percent. Texas Texas is the there's something big in Texas. Texas is the biggest state in the country, 24.8 million people. It is the third-fastest growing by percentage but it grew almost half a million people over the past year. There's something happening in Texas. The unemployment rate also fell to 8 percent, 70,000 jobs created I think in October, November, even as the rest of the economy was losing jobs. There are some interesting things happening with Texas. It might emerge first out of this recession. And Colorado has five million people. Its population growth is 1.8 percent. But you can see the fingerprints of the recession all over these population numbers because people simply aren't moving as much. They're staying put and some of the places where we saw fast growth for a very long time California, for example, it added I think 381,000 people, but that is some of the slowest population growth for California in a very, very long time. The perception there is that 12.5 percent jobless rate. There's simply high cost of living and not very many opportunities. The slowest growing states, quickly, Michigan, Maine, Rhode Island. Michigan has lost population now four years in a row. We know that story. So those states are actually shrinking.
[Costello:] "Romans' Numeral."
[Romans:] 308, 212,403 to be precise.
[Holmes:] That's got to be the population.
[Romans:] That's right. That's the U.S. population. We were 307 million in July when these most recent numbers were done and now census says by yesterday they think we have topped 308 million people in this country. By the year 2039, in case you're wondering, in case you love population stats like I do
[Holmes:] Who doesn't?
[Romans:] We will likely top 400 million people in this country by the year 2039.
[Costello:] At least we're still birthing babies.
[Romans:] We are but immigration is the biggest drive and then the descendants of immigrants is still the biggest driver of population growth in this country.
[Costello:] You've read this report in detail, haven't you?
[Romans:] I love this stuff.
[Holmes:] Can't wait to talk to you during the break more about these numbers.
[Costello:] I can't believe we have to talk about Madonna now!
[Romans:] I'm so disappointed.
[Costello:] Alina Cho got this one-on-one interview with Madonna. And Madonna's talking about her philanthropy efforts and you might be surprised. It's 20 minutes past the hour.