PROVIDENCE — The decline in Rhode Island’s population for the third straight year, as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau, is being driven by the migration of young, college-educated people looking for better job opportunities in other states, according to experts.

Losing these skilled people is an alarming trend, says University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro. He warns that a lack of educated people of working age makes it more difficult to attract high-tech companies, and their jobs, to Rhode Island.

In a year in which the U.S. population topped 300 million for the first time, Rhode Island was one of just four states to see its population decrease in the Census Bureau’s annual estimates. From a recent high estimate of 1,078,930 in 2004, the state’s population had fallen to 1,067,610 last year, according to estimates. From the 2005 estimate of 1,073,579, the state lost nearly 6,000 residents.

The most recent estimate is still above the 2000 U.S. Census count of 1,048,319 Rhode Islanders.

The other states to lose population last year were Michigan, which lost 5,190 people from a population of more than 10 million; New York, which shed 9,538 from a population of more than 19 million; and Louisiana, still recovering from the havoc caused by Hurricane Katrina, which lost 219,563 from a population of some 4.5 million, according to estimates.

The Rhode Island loss cannot be blamed on the state’s parents, who are making babies right on pace. Since 2000, the number of births and deaths in Rhode Island has been consistent, according to numbers provided by the Census Bureau. Over the past six years, Rhode Island averaged 12,670 births and 9,719 deaths per year. The year-to-year numbers keep remarkably close to those averages.

The net number of immigrants moving here from other countries has also been steady, averaging the addition of 3,656 people per year since 2000.

That leaves domestic migration — people pulling up their Rhode Island roots and moving to other states — as the culprit behind Rhode Island’s dwindling population estimates. After gaining small numbers of people from other states from 2001 to 2003, Rhode Island began losing the battle in 2004, with an estimated net loss of 2,114 people. In 2005, the estimate was a net loss of 11,618, and last year a net loss of 12,566.

While Rhode Island has for decades lost retired people to warmer climates, “The most recent group that has been leaving is the young, college-educated adults, seeking better opportunities and seeking more affordable housing,” said Mark Brown, principal planner in the Office of Statewide Planning, under the Department of Administration.

RHODE ISLAND’S population loss fits with regional trends; the Northeast is the slowest-growing region of the country, with an overall population increase last year of about 0.1 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau estimates. For comparison, the Midwest grew at 0.4 percent, the South at 1.4 percent, and the West, 1.5 percent.

Richard Alba, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University at Albany, said the problem stems from the combination of many good Northeast colleges that produce skilled graduates and a sluggish job market that leaves them few places to work.

“We have a rather highly educated group of young people, and we don’t really have the jobs for these highly educated people, so they go to other states,” said Alba. “There’s a lack of job growth and lack of opportunity for young people that’s commensurate with their educations.”

For those young graduates, said Lardaro, “if you don’t get a job offer for $35,000 or more, you live with mom and dad, or you leave. There’s a fair amount of jobs for people right out of college that don’t pay that. Rhode Islanders who don’t want to live with mom and dad, and don’t have the [high-paying] offer, leave. Some may come back someday, but we don’t know. So there’s a skill drain, and that has the unfortunate consequence of making it even more difficult to amass a critical mass in high-tech.”

Lardaro also explained the population trends as “the downside of the housing boom.”

People who own homes have lots of home equity to finance a job search. “It basically allows some people to sell their homes, make a lot of profit and then move to a part of the country with much better job growth, buy a really nice house and have money left over to subsidize a job search. We lost a fair amount of skilled people, and that’s difficult to make up. So that’s really the downside of the housing boom.”

Brown noted that in two of the fastest growing states, Arizona and Texas, “they are building these walled out communities faster than you can sneeze. The prices are very reasonable. Down in Texas you can get a three-bedroom home for $125,000. That’s amazing. Utility bills are going to be a little bit less. Taxes, interestingly enough, in some of those areas, are higher than we have here. [People leaving Rhode Island] will pay more in property taxes, but I think they pretty much accept that because most of them will be able to purchase a home that they can’t here now.”

To slow the domestic migration of educated workers, “you better have good job growth, and we don’t,” said Lardaro. “No one is going to accuse Rhode Island of being a job-creation machine. This is not our decade. New England is kind of sitting this decade out. As a group we led in the ’80s, , we led in the ’90s, we’re being left behind in the ’00s.”

IN THE 1980S, the regional economy benefited from construction and corporate activity, he said. “In the ’80s in Rhode Island, we had real, meaningful and substantial job creation. We’ll probably never see that again. In the ’90s, , we had a fair amount of job creation in business services, retailing and tourism.… In this decade we’re adding jobs, no doubt about that, but we’re also losing a fair amount. So they are largely canceling out, so the net change has been very small. Last month it was zero.”

Governor Carcieri, soon to be sworn in for his second term, urged caution with the census numbers and defended the performance of the state’s job market during his first term.

“Considering that Rhode Island is one of the most densely populated states, ours will never be a state that experiences high population growth,” said Carcieri’s spokesman, Michael Maynard, in a statement. “But I think you also have to question these figures, which are census estimates and involve sampling. With that said, Rhode Island’s job growth has actually outperformed the other states in the region over the past five years. Since Governor Carcieri took office, Rhode Island has grown jobs at twice the rate of the other New England states and is second only to New Hampshire in the percentage of jobs gained.”

The governor believes that Rhode Island’s “high tax burden can be a disincentive to live and work here,” said Maynard. He touted “the beginning of major reforms in our tax structure” in the last state budget, such as “increasing the phase-out of the car tax, increasing property tax rebates for our most vulnerable citizens, reducing the capital gains tax and creating a flat-tax alternative.”

Alba agrees that part of the solution would be reducing the cost of living, which is a combination of many factors, including the tax burden. “But the primary solution is to have a more robustly growing economy.”

Lardaro sees the need for drastic steps. “With our budget deficits, the fact that our population is declining and the fact that we know our tax and cost structure is not competitive, Rhode Island needs to reinvent itself. This is not the time for piecemeal answers.”

Survey: Have you ever moved out of R.I., and why?