LANSING – Studies show that young, highly educated persons gravitate towards regions that do not have just jobs, but jobs with higher average pay and where “possibilities and opportunities abound,” an economist at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank said.
Weather and other natural features also play a role in attracting younger, educated workers, an article by Britton Lombardi, an associate economist said, but growth in the migration of younger workers to areas like Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, and Chicago show that the Midwest can attract the highly mobile, young college-educated.
But the piece also said that while much focus nationwide has been on attracting and keeping younger workers, the fastest growing population of workers in the next years will actually be older workers, those over the age of 55.
The article also showed that while the Midwest has fewer college-educated adults than the East, the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor’s degree has grown faster than all other parts of the country. The Midwest also had more college graduates than did either the South or West.
Having a variety of employment available is also important in drawing younger, educated workers, the article said, since those persons are not just mobile physically they are mobile in terms of their career choice. Though they are educated in specific fields, they may not choose to make that field their career, the article said.
While areas that have been successful with technology companies have also been successful in attracting younger educated people (the San Francisco area saw nearly twice as many young people move into its region than leave from 1995-2000, the piece said), areas with knowledge industries such as finance and real estate have also done well, the article said.
“Metropolitan areas that value human capital and maintain a strong regional economy draw in these young and educated individuals,” the article said.
Other amenities are critical to attracting these workers, the article said, and that could include lively neighborhoods with affordable housing near the city centers or relatively nearby parks that allow for hiking and sports. But the article also said it was unclear exactly how important having these amenities available was to the younger worker.
The article said that in terms of overall education and job skills, younger workers are actually at something of a disadvantage over older workers. Since the 1970s there has been dramatic increase in the overall educational levels of the average worker, and beginning in that decade younger educated workers began taking over from older, less educated workers as they retired.
Younger workers therefore do not necessarily have an education advantage over older workers today, the article said, and they do not have skills advantages over the older workers.
By 2016, the pool of workers older than 55 is expected to grow by 46.7 percent while the overall labor force is expected to grow by just 0.8 percent, the article said. Older workers will remain at the job because they cannot take advantage of full Social Security benefits until they are 67, because corporate retirement plans are not as generous as traditional pension systems, because there are fewer retiree health benefits and because the overall health of older workers is better.
That means corporations may have to look at ways of retaining those older workers, the article said.
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