As of July 1, North Dakota’s population increased 2.17 percent compared with the previous year. As a whole, the U.S. population rose 0.75 percent during that period.
Oil-and-gas drilling in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation has been a boon for jobs, attracting out-of-state workers by the thousands and transforming sleepy rural towns overnight.
Domestic migration accounted for 70 percent of North Dakota’s population boost — the largest in the nation. In all, 10,476 people moved from another state to North Dakota during the time period evaluated.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made extracting oil and gas from the Bakken possible.
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