Seattle Once Again Fastest-Growing Big City, Census Data Shows (crime, unemployed)

[jabogitlu]

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...us-data-shows/

Sorry to disappoint those of you who like to talk about how we're in a doom loop, but....

Data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows the boom times aren’t over just yet: Seattle just reclaimed its title as the fastest-growing big city in the U.S.

From July 1, 2021, to July 1, 2022, Seattle had a net gain of about 17,750 people, bringing the total population to 749,000. The city’s growth rate for the year pencils out to 2.4%, easily the fastest among the 50 largest U.S. cities. The rate of growth is quite comparable to what we saw in the 2010s.

[rjshae]

It probably doesn't hurt that the place has been cleaned up a lot since the pandemic.

[Guineas]

SLU is hopping. Great seeing happy hour places packed again. Even downtown downtown looks more crowded lately.

We need to clean up Third Ave even more. You can't have the central transit arterial be a cluster of open drug use or loitering.

[uniquetraveler]

Great to see Seattle back at the top again..

There will of course be some haters regardless. If the population is declining, they will talk about drug use, homelessness, etc. and then when you show Seattle is actually growing with people moving in, the next moment they will change the discussion to high housing prices and traffic due to more people!

[WestGuest]

Bigger isnt necessarily better - traffic crime and taxes rise- what benefit do we get?

[fnh]

The New York Times recently published data demonstrating that college educated workers are migrating away from Seattle, a trend that began before the pandemic. The influx of people moving here increasingly consists of those who are least likely to be able to support themselves. That is hardly a good thing.

A common news report features someone who recently moved to Seattle and immediately seeks assistance. The woman interviewed in a Jan 2023 article linked below moved from Indiana to Seattle in 2021, with 14-year-old twins, and was given a new public housing unit in a coveted downtown location. She gushes that "Washington has loved on us since we've been here."

From a sustainability standpoint, more people moving to Seattle is not a positive at all, either for the environment or for the residents whose tax monies have been increasingly shifted toward supporting needy newcomers instead of toward supporting existing residents and infrastructure. Indeed, this in-migration may very well hasten the degradation and urban doom-loop we are already experiencing.

Seattle will give free transit cards to all public housing residents
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...ing-residents/

("Free" is directly costing taxpayers several million dollars per year, while our public transit system faces massive fare shortfalls and the working people already here are understandably frightened off buses and trains that are occupied by vagrants and open drug users.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...sultPosition=1

[Arcos]

Originally Posted by fnh

The New York Times recently published data demonstrating that college educated workers are migrating away from Seattle, a trend that began before the pandemic. The influx of people moving here increasingly consists of those who are least likely to be able to support themselves. That is hardly a good thing.

A common news report features someone who recently moved to Seattle and immediately seeks assistance. The woman interviewed in a Jan 2023 article linked below moved from Indiana to Seattle in 2021, with 14-year-old twins, and was given a new public housing unit in a coveted downtown location. She gushes that "Washington has loved on us since we've been here."

From a sustainability standpoint, more people moving to Seattle is not a positive at all, either for the environment or for the residents whose tax monies have been increasingly shifted toward supporting needy newcomers instead of toward supporting existing residents and infrastructure. Indeed, this in-migration may very well hasten the degradation and urban doom-loop we are already experiencing.

Seattle will give free transit cards to all public housing residents
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...ing-residents/

("Free" is directly costing taxpayers several million dollars per year, while our public transit system faces massive fare shortfalls and the working people already here are understandably frightened off buses and trains that are occupied by vagrants and open drug users.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...sultPosition=1

They may have published this recently but the data are already two years out of date (2021 census data) and likely represent pandemic flight more than anything.

[Guineas]

Originally Posted by fnh

The New York Times recently published data demonstrating that college educated workers are migrating away from Seattle, a trend that began before the pandemic. The influx of people moving here increasingly consists of those who are least likely to be able to support themselves.

Did you even read the article? Or do you just make stuff up as you go? That last sentence of yours is completely unsubstantiated in the article your posted. The article says very clearly "But among those large urban areas, the dozen metros with the highest living costs — nearly all of them coastal — have had a uniquely bifurcated migration pattern: As they saw net gains from college graduates, they lost large numbers of workers without degrees. At least, that was true until recently. Now, large, expensive metros are shedding both kinds of workers."

Seattle is basically pricing out both college grads and non-college grads. Not all college grads can afford Seattle. And to be perfectly frank, a college grad isn't what it used to be and is a dime a dozen in cities like Seattle.

Secondly, the outmigration has largely already started to reverse itself as the pandemic winded down and return to office become more widespread, hence the Seattle is fastest growing major city in 2022 data.

[fnh]

Guineas, evidently the concept of proportionality is beyond your comprehension.

The out-migration of college educated workers leaving Seattle began before the pandemic, the inflection point being 2018-2019. Yes, the NY Times data set ends in 2021 so it is certainly possible that the multi-year trend has reversed. Possible, but one cannot say likely.

The Seattle Times article data set being championed here as meaningful is a crude single year estimate, from July 2021 - July 2022, so it is similarly 'out of date' and contains zero information on the additional ~17,750 people in Seattle proper - where they are coming from, whether they are employed or unemployed, their education and/or income level. Nothing. Also the same data set shows that while the city of Seattle gained ~17,750 bodies, King County as a whole lost ~4,000 bodies.

How has Seattle's homeless population changed in the same time period, one wonders? Good question. The Aug 2022 WaPo article below highlights Seattle's new method for trying to count them. The article features the extended Tirado family, who moved to Seattle en masse in the spring of 2022. While some of the Tirados went directly into homeless shelters, the rest went directly into street encampments. The homeless Tirado family alone represents at least nine of the newcomers to Seattle reflected in the ~17,750.

America's first homelessness problem: Knowing who is actually homeless
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md...ud-statistics/

Goodness knows that I have been a big Seattle booster over the years (nearing thirty) since I first arrived. (And while I still view myself as a transplant, my husband's family has been here for nearly a century.) But it is immature and foolish to ascribe greater meaning to data that impart next to nothing, or to minimize the very real problems that still loom large in Seattle.

[usernametaken]

The majority of people I meet complain of at least one of either traffic, high cost of living or too many people. Wishing that the city's population registers no more growth is not the same as wishing doom or gloom.

King county population dropped 20,000 in 2021 and grew 14,000 in 2022. Might be comparing CY to FY, but we are recovering it seems.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sea...unded-in-2022/