3:00 November 06, 2003
Census shows "Milwaukee gains young professionals"

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - November 5, 2003

By AVRUM D. LANK and JOEL DRESANG

The Milwaukee area was a magnet for young, single college-educated people during the last half of the 1990s, according to a recent census report, a "brain gain" elating those working to make the region attractive as a place to settle.

"This is good news," said Dean Amhaus, president of Spirit of Milwaukee, which works at improving Milwaukee's image. "This is going to change people's minds. One of the biggest problems that we have had here was the lack of confidence of our own people in knowing that this is a new city, that it is becoming hot, that it is becoming cool to live here."

The census data, released Monday, will help Amhaus in his work.

It shows that between 1995 and 2000, 10,964 single, college-educated people ages 25 to 39 moved to the Milwaukee area, 579 more than left. Of the 276 metro areas studied by the Census Bureau, only 77 had such a net gain in migration.

On a population-adjusted basis, Milwaukee ranked No. 72 among the metro areas, ahead of such places as Columbus, Ohio; Detroit; Cleveland; Philadelphia; Cincinnati and New Orleans, all of which lost such people during the period. Boston, considered a magnet for young people, ranked No. 68 on a population-adjusted basis.

David Anderson moved to downtown Milwaukee as a single person in 1995. He has since married and moved to Wauwatosa.

"There's an exciting environment that Milwaukee is building inside itself that's making it more attractive and making me feel that the decision I made to move here was a good one," he said.

Anderson, 32, is marketing director for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. He had an internship at the Rep while he was studying arts management at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. When he graduated from college in 1993, he moved back to the Milwaukee area.

Besides being drawn professionally to Milwaukee, Anderson says he has been attracted by the city's accessibility and its offering of restaurants, entertainment and parks.

"I think it's becoming more attractive," he said.

Networking pays off

Attracting young, single, college-educated people is important for economic development.

"The relative influence of this small population is far greater than its size would suggest," the census report said. "Immigration of young people . . . carries the potential of population growth through future childbearing. When the young people moving into an area are also college educated, they provide a measure of economic opportunity in the area, while simultaneously serving to raise the area's stock of human capital."

"We are holding our own in the largest urban area in the state, and maybe it says that some of the efforts that are going on over there to involve young people in networks is working," said David J. Ward, president of NorthStar Economics Inc., an economic development consulting firm in Madison.

While Milwaukee was attracting more such people than it lost during the period, the state fared less well. Among other Wisconsin metropolitan areas, only Wausau was a net gainer.

Madison had a net outflow of 4,462 during the period, ranking low with several other college communities where education is an export industry. "They come here without degrees and they leave with degrees," said Frank Goldberg, associate vice president for policy analysis and research for the UW System.

Wisconsin as a whole had a net outflow of 11,224 single, college-educated young people from 1995 to 2000, ranking it No. 35 among the 50 states and District of Columbia, the report said.

Recruiting tool

Goldberg noted that, according to the census data, Wisconsin was 18th best in the nation in keeping such people, but ranked No. 43 in attracting them. "That is where the problem in our view really lies," he said.

"In general, the young, single and educated like to move to central cities," he said, helping to explain why Milwaukee did better than the rest of the state. He added that it will take additional analysis of census data to determine whether Milwaukee's gain came at the expense of other parts of Wisconsin or the rest of the country.

Ward said it would be useful to know whether people with a particular type of college degree were attracted to Milwaukee. That could help with future recruiting, he said. The census bureau did not break down its data in that manner.

Nationally, Naples, Fla.; Las Vegas; Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; and Portland, Ore., were the major metro areas that saw the greatest growth on a population-adjusted basis. Denver, Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth all saw big gains, as did the area of San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, Calif. - the center of the high-tech boom of the late 1990s.

The metro areas that fared the worst on a population-adjusted basis were Grand Forks, N.D.; Muncie, Ind.; State College, Pa.; Auburn-Opelika, Ala., and Bryan-College Station, Texas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From the Nov. 5, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel