In response to President Trump’s proposed immigration bill, Brookings recently analyzed census data from earlier this year to demonstrate the importance of immigration for growth within much of the United States.
I’d like to share three tables from their analysis.
The first two look at international migration grains and domestic migration gains over the last 3 decades (the last decade isn’t quite a decade).
Here you can see that New York, Los Angeles, and Miami (all port cities) have dominated international migration to the US since 1990. But at the same time, international migration has become less geographically concentrated. From 1990-2000 the top 5 cities received almost half of all immigrants moving to the US. More recently, that number has dropped to 34%.
Domestic migration is different in that it’s a zero sum game. When one US city gains, another US city loses. Here there is a very clear migration trend toward cities in the southwest – arguably because of weather, job growth, cheaper housing, and probably a bunch of other factors.
If we look at actual international and domestic migration numbers over the last 6 years, the 12 largest metropolitan areas look like this:
The key takeaways here are that 8 of these cities are losing people to domestic migration and only 7 of these cities have a positive net migration number – meaning their population is actually growing.
What is clear is that the international migration column is a pretty important one if you believe that growth is valuable.
If you’re Dallas, Houston or Atlanta, maybe you care a little less about that column. But for most of the other cities, international migration is either the only way you’re growing (look at Miami go) or keeping your population losses in check (see Philadelphia).
One of the great things about social media is that it gives us access to data that previously didn’t exist or was difficult to collect.
Take, for example, LinkedIn’s monthly report on employment trends called the Workforce Report. They look at which industries are hiring, where people are moving for jobs, and so on. Click here for the June 2017 edition.
Note that architecture/engineering hiring appears to be up nationally, which is usually a positive leading indicator.
I’ll leave you all to go through the report, but I did want to pull out a few of their maps and one of their takeaways. Below are maps of the cities that lost the most workers and gained the most workers over the last 12 months.
In response to President Trump’s proposed immigration bill, Brookings recently analyzed census data from earlier this year to demonstrate the importance of immigration for growth within much of the United States.
I’d like to share three tables from their analysis.
The first two look at international migration grains and domestic migration gains over the last 3 decades (the last decade isn’t quite a decade).
Here you can see that New York, Los Angeles, and Miami (all port cities) have dominated international migration to the US since 1990. But at the same time, international migration has become less geographically concentrated. From 1990-2000 the top 5 cities received almost half of all immigrants moving to the US. More recently, that number has dropped to 34%.
Domestic migration is different in that it’s a zero sum game. When one US city gains, another US city loses. Here there is a very clear migration trend toward cities in the southwest – arguably because of weather, job growth, cheaper housing, and probably a bunch of other factors.
If we look at actual international and domestic migration numbers over the last 6 years, the 12 largest metropolitan areas look like this:
The key takeaways here are that 8 of these cities are losing people to domestic migration and only 7 of these cities have a positive net migration number – meaning their population is actually growing.
What is clear is that the international migration column is a pretty important one if you believe that growth is valuable.
If you’re Dallas, Houston or Atlanta, maybe you care a little less about that column. But for most of the other cities, international migration is either the only way you’re growing (look at Miami go) or keeping your population losses in check (see Philadelphia).
One of the great things about social media is that it gives us access to data that previously didn’t exist or was difficult to collect.
Take, for example, LinkedIn’s monthly report on employment trends called the Workforce Report. They look at which industries are hiring, where people are moving for jobs, and so on. Click here for the June 2017 edition.
Note that architecture/engineering hiring appears to be up nationally, which is usually a positive leading indicator.
I’ll leave you all to go through the report, but I did want to pull out a few of their maps and one of their takeaways. Below are maps of the cities that lost the most workers and gained the most workers over the last 12 months.
I have Richard Florida’s recent book, The New Urban Crisis, sitting on my bedside table. I’m only about ¼ of the way through it, but I’m really enjoying it. I’ll write more once I’m done.
What I instead want to talk about today is a recent (and related) article that Florida published in CityLab called: Did Land-Use Restrictions Save the Rust Belt?
In it, he leans on the research of two economists – Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the University of California at Berkeley – and makes 3 valuable points.
They are:
It is estimated that land-use restrictions (which limit development / supply) have reduced overall GDP in the U.S. by about 9% or approximately $1.5 trillion per year. It is also estimated that housing supply constraints alone lowered overall growth by more than half between 1964 and 2009.
At the same time, these land-use restrictions may have benefited other regions – such as the Rust Belt – that would have otherwise lost more people and jobs to places like New York and San Francisco. The research found that without these land-use restrictions, employment growth between 1964 and 2009 would have been more than 1,000% higher in New York and almost 700% higher in San Francisco.
The final takeaway is one that we’ve talked about before on this blog. One of the most effective things we can do to counteract geographic inequality is to build great transit; transit that connects both people and land to the most desirable areas of our city.
And with that, Happy Canada Day weekend all.
Photo by João Silas on Unsplash
The established trend of people moving from colder northern cities to warmer amenity-rich cities seem to play out here.
That said, one of their “key insights” is that fewer workers today are moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since February 2017, there has been a 17% decline in the net number of workers.
They blame housing affordability (ahem, lack of supply). People are simply turning to other great cities like Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Austin. They’re growing and cheaper.
One of the other cool things about the report is that you can drill down into individual cities to see where people are moving from. I looked up Miami and Chicago just to do a quick comparison.
Not surprisingly, Miami is seeing a significant contingent from South America. What’s interesting about this random comparison is how international Miami is and how regional Chicago is in terms of their draws.
I would love to see similar data for Canada. This is valuable stuff.
I have Richard Florida’s recent book, The New Urban Crisis, sitting on my bedside table. I’m only about ¼ of the way through it, but I’m really enjoying it. I’ll write more once I’m done.
What I instead want to talk about today is a recent (and related) article that Florida published in CityLab called: Did Land-Use Restrictions Save the Rust Belt?
In it, he leans on the research of two economists – Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the University of California at Berkeley – and makes 3 valuable points.
They are:
It is estimated that land-use restrictions (which limit development / supply) have reduced overall GDP in the U.S. by about 9% or approximately $1.5 trillion per year. It is also estimated that housing supply constraints alone lowered overall growth by more than half between 1964 and 2009.
At the same time, these land-use restrictions may have benefited other regions – such as the Rust Belt – that would have otherwise lost more people and jobs to places like New York and San Francisco. The research found that without these land-use restrictions, employment growth between 1964 and 2009 would have been more than 1,000% higher in New York and almost 700% higher in San Francisco.
The final takeaway is one that we’ve talked about before on this blog. One of the most effective things we can do to counteract geographic inequality is to build great transit; transit that connects both people and land to the most desirable areas of our city.
And with that, Happy Canada Day weekend all.
Photo by João Silas on Unsplash
The established trend of people moving from colder northern cities to warmer amenity-rich cities seem to play out here.
That said, one of their “key insights” is that fewer workers today are moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since February 2017, there has been a 17% decline in the net number of workers.
They blame housing affordability (ahem, lack of supply). People are simply turning to other great cities like Seattle, Portland, Denver, and Austin. They’re growing and cheaper.
One of the other cool things about the report is that you can drill down into individual cities to see where people are moving from. I looked up Miami and Chicago just to do a quick comparison.
Not surprisingly, Miami is seeing a significant contingent from South America. What’s interesting about this random comparison is how international Miami is and how regional Chicago is in terms of their draws.
I would love to see similar data for Canada. This is valuable stuff.
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