Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianTH
As a casual reminder:
Net population and net migration numbers can conceal a lot of underlying churn as people are both coming and going. This is particularly true of well-educated young people who are generally more mobile than most population segments, and even more particularly true of such people soon after receiving a new degree. And in fact if you trace a given individual, at different points in their life they can be on both sides of the equation, sometimes multiple times.
Overall this underlying churn is a very good thing for the economic development and general vitality of a region--it increases the available human capital; promotes the interchange of new ideas, technologies, business models, and so forth; fosters ongoing business and other economic relations between regions; broadens the available cultural/entertainment amenities; and so on. Given that perspective, it is misleading to suggest as a goal that Pittsburgh should be trying to retain any specific group of young well-educated people, as opposed to seeing growth in that population segment on a net basis. Indeed, the ideal would be net growth AND large churn with other regions, and that would mean lots of out-migration (as well as compensating in-migration).
So we shouldn't see it as an inherent problem when someone raised here gets a degree and then leaves, as long as other well-educated people are coming here from elsewhere to compensate. And in fact that first person may well spend some time elsewhere then return here later (sometimes called a "boomeranger"), and those can be among the most valuable residents of all.
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Great points, BrianTH. It is a fool's errand when regions desperately try to "retain" their youth... and plug the "brain drain".
A good chunk of Pittsburgh's native "best and brightest" will continually leave... and they will be replaced by some of the "best and brightest" from other regions. It is natural churn.
Regions obsessed with "brain drain" and retention (which informed Pittsburgh policy until very recently) only seem to recognize those who leave... placing priority on anecdotal sob stories about the son who left for NYC (ironically a massive net domestic migration loser) and can't come back because the right job or poli sci program isn't here. Some of us never seem to recognize the dynamic newcomers in our midst... because they don't have multi-generational roots at some South Hills high school. But they are making a difference in today's Pittsburgh, and are among the most productive, creative and educated in our workforce.
And in terms of hard numbers... brain drain obsessives in Pittsburgh have been wrong about the data for decades. Pittsburgh had a very real demographic crisis in the 1980s (which capped off five previous decades of relative stagnation)... and saw a huge chunk of its youth workforce depart... which continues to impact our "natural increase". However, Pittsburgh has not had a retention problem in over 20 years. This metro has ranked near the bottom in terms of losing our natives. The problem was... that we were also ranking at the bottom in terms of attracting newcomers... so we suffered net migration loss and experienced a birth deficit... contributing to our continued regional population loss up until a few years ago.
In recent years, Pittsburgh has hit an inflection point and now vigorously attracts people from outside the region. In fact, Pittsburgh is now the only major metro in the Northeast/Midwest region (sans govt job machine DC) that experiences net domestic migration increase. It takes a lot of newcomers to overcome our "natural decrease" and post overall population gains for the metro.
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