SULLIVAN COUNTY — Federal Census statistics released this week indicate Sullivan County saw a significant near-two-percent drop in its population.

Between 2013 and 2014, the county's overall population fell from 76,999 to 75,943, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That's even though local births outpaced deaths during that same period.

The county's population has been slowly declining for much of the past decade, but the exodus accelerated last year, likely due to a combination of chronic unemployment, escalating taxes and a lack of opportunities, as compared to growing regions in the New York metropolitan area and in the southern United States.

Sullivan, however, isn't different from most counties in upstate New York and the Northeast in general, which continue to lose population to other areas of the U.S.