Census: 308,400,408 Americans at Start of 2010

POPULATION -- January 1, 2010 at 1:49 PM EDT

Census: 308,400,408 Americans at Start of 2010

Another year, another few million Americans. There are 2,606,181 more Americans today than there were on Dec. 31, 2008, according to the Census Bureau's annual year-end projections. That's about 0.9 percent growth for the year.

Births in the coming year will continue to out-pace deaths, the Census reported. A person will be born every eight seconds in January 2010; someone will die every 12. Immigration will bring a new person to this country every 37 seconds. In all, the total U.S population will tick upward by one person every 14 seconds.

But not every part of the U.S. is growing.

Michigan lost 32,759 residents last year, or 0.33 percent. The state's population has shrunk every year since 2006. Maine and Rhode Island also saw their populations decline, though by smaller amounts.

Texas grew more than any other state, picking up 478,000 new residents, followed by California (381,000), North Carolina (134,000), Georgia (131,000) and Florida (114,000), according to the Census report. State populations are measured from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

America remains an outlier among developed countries: Much of Western Europe, as well as Japan, is growing older and growing slower, while the developing world simply grows.

The U.S. population hit 300 million in 2006. At the time, demographer William Frey, of the Brookings Institution, told Gwen Ifill:

Unlike Europe and unlike Japan, however, we're going to be projected to grow in our labor force population, as well as in our child population, over the next three or four decades. That will put us in a much better position, not only to take care of our elderly population, but also to have a more vibrant and vital labor force than they will have.

And the fact that they're coming from other countries to some degree means that we're going to be able to connect more with other countries in the world. In a global economy, I think this is a plus.

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