Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think Nashville and Austin have started to separate from this group in more ways than some of the numbers suggest.
Maybe. All are doing well, only Louisville is a tier below as far as metro size.
This is a really interesting point. Which cities do you feel are most at risk for decline?
I'll stick to what the numbers show (based off of Montclair's initial data and using american fact finder data to base it off of population growth). The Texas (outside of Austin) and Oklahoma metros are the ones that have the biggest gaps between matching working age population growth and number of jobs created within the same timeframe. Riverside was up there too, though that's a tough one because, IMO, it should be rolled into LA's numbers.
The first sentence has merits. The rest is what the point of my post was getting at. If you retain your college grads (on top of already having a lot of workers in the 25-40 range) and are seeing a huge influx in total population growth (of all ages), you better create jobs at at least the same clip (if not higher) or eventually there is going to be a crunch. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that.
Right now (outside of the huge creators: NYC, LA, Chicago, SF) you have:
Some in the middle ... Cincinnati is the one I'll use (I'm from Cleveland, wish i could use my city as the example) in that it is growing modestly in population across the board and still creating more jobs than that population growth. To me, that's healthy. Austin, Nashville, Sacramento, Kansas City, Louisville and some others are in that tier.
Then you have the areas that are creating jobs but lagging in true population growth (Cleveland, and a lot of its peers, are in this group). Yes, they a ton of potential, but as I said previously, that potential needs to correlate to real population growth, or why will job creators stay in "Cleveland-like" places when you are creating jobs that can't be filled because the population is still flat/shrinking? Again, as I said before, the next 10 years will be big for these places (Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, etc.)
Finally, you have the group of cities that, on the surface, look like they are creating a ton of jobs, until you weigh that against the age of their working population and against the overall amount of people flocking there. A lot of those metros now have a glut of workers in that 25-40 range. Those people aren't leaving the workforce anytime soon, and they are now the ones that are having kids who will eventually join them. Add in that they are popular places for people outside moving into because they are "in" and it is going to be a crunch in a lot of these places if they don't pick up the job growth.
Things go in cycles and there are indications that some booming Sun Belt towns may turn into what they think the Rust Belt has been/is.
You tried to match the retiring age cohort with preteens entering the workforce in a couple years. Except that age group is about to go through 2 major moves (college and then graduation) where the home city regularly sees upwards of 60% turnover both times. Predicting where a 15-year old kid ends up in a decade is extremely problematic. If you wanted to do this mental jujitsu (and I really think you are pushing numbers past their breaking point), you should look at those about to retire, and those post-graduates entering a metro’s workforce. Is there a current replacement population moving in, because that’s who is replacing the 62-year old, not someone still losing baby teeth.
Incidentally your initial list in that post, the one you used as a baseline before delving into prognosticating on a 10-year olds movements, involved looking at 15-22 year olds working. That obviously artificially hurts those places with large numbers of secondary and university students. There is a reason ages 25-54 is usually segregated out from these lists, as that is the prime working years and ignores much of the noise you are running into.
You tried to match the retiring age cohort with preteens entering the workforce in a couple years. Except that age group is about to go through 2 major moves (college and then graduation) where the home city regularly sees upwards of 60% turnover both times. Predicting where a 15-year old kid ends up in a decade is extremely problematic. If you wanted to do this mental jujitsu (and I really think you are pushing numbers past their breaking point), you should look at those about to retire, and those post-graduates entering a metro’s workforce. Is there a current replacement population moving in, because that’s who is replacing the 62-year old, not someone still losing baby teeth.
Incidentally your initial list in that thread, the one you used as a baseline before delving into prognosticating on a 10-year olds movements, involved looking at 15-22 year olds working. That obviously artificially hurts those places with large numbers of secondary and university students.
60% turnover? Absolute not in my experience upwards of 90% of people stay in the region (or go to the states flagship school), plus still only 60% of people actually go to college.
You’d be talking about like 5% turnover for people going to college.
Then the majority of movement post graduation is back home not to some place
60% turnover? Absolute not in my experience upwards of 90% of people stay in the region (or go to the states flagship school), plus still only 60% of people actually go to college.
You’d be talking about like 5% turnover for people going to college.
Then the majority of movement post graduation is back home not to some place
Metro’s keeping their 4-year college grads range from 25-70%.
I haven’t seen actual numbers for metro’s keeping high school students. I do know that here in Wake County, the top two colleges to send graduates are invariably ECU and App State, both out of the metro. NC State is usually 3rd, followed by UNC (also out of the metro). Charlotte usually rounds out the top 5 (for those keeping track at home, 80% of the top university destinations are out of metro).
As for percentage of people who stay in a region, it looks to be dependent on which region. Somewhere like Dallas might see only 40% native Texans. Somewhere like Cincinnati only see 35% non-Ohioans. Americans like to move, particularly the upper-quartiles. Depending on 12-year olds staying in a metro to prove a point is building a house upon the sand.
Metro’s keeping their 4-year college grads range from 25-70%.
I haven’t seen actual numbers for metro’s keeping high school students. I do know that here in Wake County, the top two colleges to send graduates are invariably ECU and App State, both out of the metro. NC State is usually 3rd, followed by UNC (also out of the metro). Charlotte usually rounds out the top 5 (for those keeping track at home, 80% of the top university destinations are out of metro).
As for percentage of people who stay in a region, it looks to be dependent on which region. Somewhere like Dallas might see only 40% native Texans. Somewhere like Cincinnati only see 35% non-Ohioans. Americans like to move, particularly the upper-quartiles. Depending on 12-year olds staying in a metro to prove a point is building a house upon the sand.
The City Lab stats are great and point to mainly what you'd expect, college grads in large metros tend to stick around more so than those in smaller metros with less job opportunity.
There was a huge flaw in their data for Phoenix, which ranked in last in large metros, for some reason they decided to count all of the University of Phoenix population as "students in Metro Phoenix" despite the fact that most of those students never set foot on the ground here. After they corrected for that Phoenix moved to 41% retention among 4-year college graduates, no longer on the bottom 10 list.
*UPDATE (3/18): In response to this post, Rothwell and I received a number of good suggestions about how to deepen and refine our analysis in the future. Several pointed out that Phoenix is home to the University of Phoenix, with its large online student body, many of whom don’t live in the Phoenix metro. When Rothwell redid the numbers taking this into account, Phoenix's retention rates improved to 56 percent for two- and four-year institutions and 41 percent for four-year institutions.
As for percentage of people who stay in a region, it looks to be dependent on which region. Somewhere like Dallas might see only 40% native Texans. Somewhere like Cincinnati only see 35% non-Ohioans. Americans like to move, particularly the upper-quartiles. Depending on 12-year olds staying in a metro to prove a point is building a house upon the sand.
Great link. Is the question that is trying to be answered: "What percentage of HS kids end up staying in their metro (or state since that is the data set that is available)?"
If that is what is trying to be answered, then we have to substract out the majority of immigrants. The best estimates are about 2.9 million children under 18 in the US were born overseas. There are about 47 million people born overseas that live in the US. So, children make up only 6% of this group. Presumably, many adults born overseas that live in the US immigrated as children and grew up here. But my guess is that is still a small minority of the total adult immigrant population.
Then the other factor that has to be looked at is domestic migration. I agree with you completely that this varies depending on region (as does immigration). The math on this seems more difficult to me. High growth areas could keep 95+% of their HS graduates and still have a low percentage of "Born in the State" residents due to all of the people that have moved in from other areas. Similarly, a stagnant Rust Belt Metro could lose 50% of its HS graduates to other areas but still have a high percentage of "Born in the State" residents because no one else is moving there.
Raleigh isn’t keeping 95% of its HS graduates, not even close. They might trickle back in after college graduation, but they might not. Texas is best at retaining college grads, around 60%. Every other state is doing worse at retaining college grads.
But the larger point regardless is there are so many layers to a 12-year old replacing a 60-year old in that metro’s workforce, it makes no sense to even attempt to figure it out. Your calculations are sure to be botched before the word go.
Metro’s keeping their 4-year college grads range from 25-70%.
I haven’t seen actual numbers for metro’s keeping high school students. I do know that here in Wake County, the top two colleges to send graduates are invariably ECU and App State, both out of the metro. NC State is usually 3rd, followed by UNC (also out of the metro). Charlotte usually rounds out the top 5 (for those keeping track at home, 80% of the top university destinations are out of metro).
As for percentage of people who stay in a region, it looks to be dependent on which region. Somewhere like Dallas might see only 40% native Texans. Somewhere like Cincinnati only see 35% non-Ohioans. Americans like to move, particularly the upper-quartiles. Depending on 12-year olds staying in a metro to prove a point is building a house upon the sand.
Retention rates are basically determined by how local the university population is.Harvard has a **** Greater Boston retention rate because so many people move home after college. Umass Boston has a great Retention rate because all the students are basically all locals.
Rochester has a 40% retention rate because probably ~40% of College students are from Rochester. RIT being a Institude for the deaf and U of R being generally elite are magnet schools. Detroit has Avery high retention rate because there isn’t a magnet school that really draws across the country to Detroit.
But if you looked at kids in Rochester who went to school in Rochester or kids that are from Rochester and where they went to school you’d see a much higher number of people who stay local.
Now my 90% stayed in region is technically not true by those standards because Worcester, SNH, UMass Providence and Southern Maine are not greater Boston so it’s probably like 60% stayed in the MSA.
Excluding to/from college group quarters young adults have a 14% migration rate and even this includes college students moving from Ann Arbor back to Detroit if they lived off campus. And it’s by MSA so someone moving from Enfield CT across the street to Longmeadow MA counts as a migrant too
Retention rates are basically determined by how local the university population is.Harvard has a **** Greater Boston retention rate because so many people move home after college. Umass Boston has a great Retention rate because all the students are basically all locals.
Rochester has a 40% retention rate because probably ~40% of College students are from Rochester. RIT being a Institude for the deaf and U of R being generally elite are magnet schools. Detroit has Avery high retention rate because there isn’t a magnet school that really draws across the country to Detroit.
But if you looked at kids in Rochester who went to school in Rochester or kids that are from Rochester and where they went to school you’d see a much higher number of people who stay local.
Now my 90% stayed in region is technically not true by those standards because Worcester, SNH, UMass Providence and Southern Maine are not greater Boston so it’s probably like 60% stayed in the MSA.
Excluding to/from college group quarters young adults have a 14% migration rate and even this includes college students moving from Ann Arbor back to Detroit if they lived off campus. And it’s by MSA so someone moving from Enfield CT across the street to Longmeadow MA counts as a migrant too
Among other things, you seem to be agreeing with me that young adults from 18-24 move more than any other age group.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
