Puerto Rico lost 9 percent of its population since 2004 because of economic crisis caused by lack of liquidity after paying back its $72 billion public debt.

As posted by Latino Fox News, Jose Alameda, economic professor at the University of Puerto Rico, said that "the emigration of more than 350,000 people over the last 11 years comes mainly in response to the economic crisis being suffered by the U.S. commonwealth." He also added that an estimated average of about 66 percent of all the jobs lost in the country have been due to companies who called it quits after the news spread into the market closing many doors of opportunities.

Because of the decreasing number of job opportunities in the country every year, most Puerto Ricans decided to leave the island and migrate to other places hoping to find a better chance for financial opportunities. As stated by the Latin Times, Educated, mobile and young Puerto Ricans' top destination to migrate is Florida which is now the new home to over 1 million Latinos. Second most favorite is Texas where Puerto Ricans' population has been doubled after almost a decade.

"The worst thing of all is that people of ... working age are going," said Alameda. Groups that have been mostly affected by the situation and emigration are young professionals aging 28 to 32 years old.

According to a Pew study citing U.S. Census data, among the 83, 884 Puerto Ricans who left the island in 2014, only 19,771 decided to come back. That caused the nation's population dropped by 64,073 people.  Now, with a total estimated population of only 3.5 million people, their economy is also expected to fall fast because of the decreasing number of tax payers.

"The island's population isn't expected to rebound anytime soon," Jes Manuel Krogstad wrote, author and editor at the Pew Research Center. He also added that based from the data from Census Bureau, population of Puerto Rico will continue to decline, falling to 3 million by 2050.

Reversing population loss is difficult to manage. Fortunately with Puerto Rico, there are still a lot of tremendous set of assets that can be used to improve its economy -- its Caribbean location for tourism and prodigious value in its climate. But the island has a huge problem to fix, so implementing solutions will surely take time, patience and resources before anyone sees improvements.