The streets are getting a lot less crowded in the Mohawk Valley as it faces a continual loss of population.

A recent U.S. Census Bureau report shows that while New York City is getting bigger, even the largest of cities in upstate New York are getting smaller.

New York City's population grew by 23,960 just in the year from July 2006 to July 2007 alone.

In the meantime, between 2000 and 2007, the cities of Utica and Rome lost a combined total of roughly 3,000 residents.

These numbers reflect what's seen as a long-term trend of population losses in upstate regions, as jobs become more scarce and people tend to settle elsewhere.

Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente says that the last decade had seen a great loss of manufacturing and other industries such as at Griffiss Air Force Base, and says that it's bee a slow recovery in this decade.

However, he says that the population is not being lost as greatly as it was in the past, and that the population is actually starting to stabilize.

And while the numbers may not be exactly where they'd like it, Picente says business in the realms of technology, insurance, and economic crime fighting, have the potential to bring those numbers back up.

"The jobs that you can find in the bigger cities are here at a better value," Picente said. "Because the cost of living is better the quality of life is here. You can get to those big cities from here relatively easy and still come back here and have events like the Boilermaker, the Stanley Theatre, and Munson Williams Proctor, the various quality of life issues - skiing, biking, golfing - all the quality of life is here. And again, at a better price."

And these dwindling numbers are not isolated to the Utica-Rome area, as the scenario has been pretty much the same across the upstate region, with Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, and Albany, all seeing similar losses. In fact, only Waterville saw a population increase...and that was only by about a dozen or so residents.