While America’s population growth remained flat, an oil boom drew hordes of job-seekers to North Dakota, making it the fastest-growing state over the past year, according to Census Bureau data released Thursday.

North Dakota’s population climbed by 2.17 percent between July 1, 2011, and July 1, 2012 -- a pace nearly three times faster than that of the nation as a whole, the bureau said.

The Peace Garden State wound up with roughly 15,000 more people than it had the year before – largely because of people moving there from other states.

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“We’ve all heard about the fracking and oil production and mining. There is a real influx for jobs,” said Census Bureau demographer Katrina Wengert.

North Dakota Commerce Commissioner Al Anderson says the "fastest-growing" designation isn’t surprising, given that the state has been steadily adding jobs over much of the past decade. The state has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at 3.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

And it’s not just oil. Agriculture is big business in North Dakota, and advanced manufacturing, technology-based businesses and tourism also have grown, Anderson said.

“We currently have about 22,000 job openings in North Dakota today. Of those, only a third are in our 17 oil-and gas-producing counties,” he said. "It’s more than just oil, but it’s oil that put us on map in the national press.”

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Following North Dakota in terms of percent increase over the same period were the District of Columbia (2.15 percent), Texas (1.67 percent), Wyoming (1.60 percent), Utah (1.45 percent) and Nevada (1.43 percent). North Dakota ranked only 37th in growth between the 2000 and 2010 censuses and climbed to sixth between 2010 and 2011. Each of the 10 fastest-growing states were in the South or West with the exception of North Dakota and South Dakota. 

The only two states to lose population between July 1, 2011, and July 1, 2012, were Rhode Island (-354 people or -0.03 percent) and Vermont (-581 or -0.09 percent).

According to the Census Bureau, America as a whole saw its population increase by 2.3 million from 2011 to 2012, to 313.9 million, for a growth rate of just 0.75 percent.

“The growth rate in the U.S. has picked up just a little bit from last year. Still, it’s one of the lowest U.S. growth rates since the Great Depression,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institution. 

However, the numbers do suggest “a glimmer of comeback fever” for the Mountain West and Southeast, regions that have been struggling with the housing bust and high unemployment in recent years, Frey said.

“It’s not like people are moving around a lot, but we do see the tip of the iceberg of the Sun Belt coming back.”

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The U.S. Census Bureau is getting better at counting the number of people living in the United States, though it’s still disproportionately overlooking some minorities.

A review of the accuracy of the 2010 census found that it overcounted the total U.S. population by 0.01 percent, or about 36,000 people. That compares to a census overcount of 0.49 percent in 2000 and an undercount of 1.61 percent in 1990.

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“On this one evaluation — the net undercount of the total population — this was an outstanding census,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said in a press release.

The post-enumeration survey measured the coverage of the nation’s household population (excluding the 8 million people in “group quarters,” such as nursing homes or college dorms). It surveyed a sample of the 300.7 million people living in housing units and then matched the responses to the census, resulting in estimates of error.

Census officials said renters were slightly undercounted and homeowners slightly overcounted in the 2010 census.

The 2010 count missed about 2.1 percent of black Americans and 1.5 percent of Hispanics. That's statistically comparable to levels in 2000. The non-Hispanic white population was slightly overcounted.

“While the overall coverage of the census was exemplary, the traditional hard-to-count groups, like renters, were counted less well,” Groves said. “Because ethnic and racial minorities disproportionately live in hard-to-count circumstances, they too were undercounted relative to the majority population.”

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The accuracy of the count is a big improvement from 1940, when the black undercount was estimated at a whopping 8.4 percent, according to an Associated Press review of records recently released online. That means more than a million blacks weren’t accounted for in 1940, an undercount that had ramifications at the time on the political map and the distribution of resources, according to the AP.

The total population of the U.S. was counted as 308,745,538 in 2010, a 9.7 percent increase from the 2000 count.

As required by the Constitution, the census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The population count is used to allocate House seats and federal money for roads, schools and social programs.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this report.

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The Asian population grew faster than any other racial group in the U.S. over the last decade, increasing by sizable margins in nearly every state, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.

Overall, the Asian population grew 43 percent from 2000 to 2010, from 10.2 million to 14.7 million. That’s four times faster than the total U.S. population growth in the same period.

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Another 2.6 million people identified themselves as Asian in combination with one or more other races. The combined total means 5.6 percent of all people in the U.S. identified themselves as at least part Asian in 2010.

 

The Asian alone-or-in-combination population grew by at least 30 percent in all states except for Hawaii (11 percent increase). The states with the most growth were Nevada (116 percent), Arizona (95 percent), North Carolina (85 percent), North Dakota (85 percent) and Georgia (83 percent).

The Asian population grew in every region of the U.S., but was most heavily concentrated in the West (46 percent). Nearly three-fourths of all Asians lived in 10 states: California (5.6 million), New York (1.6 million), Texas (1.1 million), New Jersey (0.8 million), Hawaii (0.8 million), Illinois (0.7 million), Washington (0.6 million), Florida (0.6 million), Virginia (0.5 million), and Pennsylvania (0.4 million).

New York (1.1 million) had the largest Asian population among cities -- more than double that of runner-up Los Angeles (484,000).

The Chinese population was the largest Asian group, followed by Filipino and Asian Indian.

Read the full Census report

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