Despite Potential Exodus, O.C. Population Projected to Grow : Demographics: More people are expected to move in than out, but there will be fewer highly skilled residents.

Is Orange County’s population going to shrink?

Not likely, say experts, although nearly four in 10 adults surveyed in a recent Times Orange County Poll said they do not see themselves living here in five years. And six in 10 said they expect their children and grandchildren to move out eventually, too.

The governor’s office recently projected that Orange County’s population will grow from 2.5 million to 3.7 million by 2040.

County leaders said there will be more than enough people moving in to replace the people who leave. What will happen, though, is that the demographics of the population will change.

For one, there will likely be fewer highly skilled, high-earning or college-educated people. That is the group whose members told pollsters that they were most likely to move within five years.

“These people are the most mobile,” said Cheryl Katz, co-director of The Times Orange County Poll, a telephone survey of 600 adults conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates from April 1 to 4. “When asked if they would retrain--learn to drive a bus or something--just to stay here, they say, ‘No way.’ ”

“Statewide figures show an out-migration of higher-status individuals and in-migration of lower-skilled people,” she said.

The county’s population has grown more than 31% since 1980.

But more people left Orange County than those who have moved here since 1990, according to the state Department of Finance’s analysis of driver’s license records. The analysis estimated that since 1990, 13,000 more people left the county than those who moved here--the first time the county incurred a net out-migration in nearly 20 years.

Such a population shift could affect the county’s ability to attract businesses, said Marilyn Loewy, executive director of the World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County. She said the county is an attractive place for business, in part, because of its skilled labor force.

“It depends on which part of the economy leaves,” she said. “If we lose aerospace and defense workers, we are losing people with excellent skills.”

Transportation, law enforcement and building industry representatives said they expect growth to continue as it has since 1980, at a rate of about 2% each year.

“We still see things holding firm,” said Christine Diemer, executive director of the Building Industry Assn.

School officials said they, too, are expecting growth, even though the number of students is not growing as fast as it once was. The county’s grade school population, from kindergarten through 12th grade, grew about 2% from September, 1991, to September, 1992. Growth in the previous year-to-year period was 4%.

There are 399,592 students registered to attend Orange County’s public schools. Officials project that number will rise to 546,000 by the year 2000.

“What we’re seeing now is a (downward) blip,” said Michael Vail, senior vice president of Taussig & Associates, which consults with school districts on building needs.

And it’s a welcome aberration, in a sense. Student population has grown so fast for three years in some schools, Vail said, that they have construction planned for the next three years just to catch up.

“We’d have to see a longer trend to say there was a slowdown,” he said, “a trend of eight to 10 years.”