Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Richard Florida and Joshua Gans just published an article in Politico called: Trump Is Making Canada Great Again. The overarching argument is that as the US closes its borders, Canada benefits. The best and brightest from around the world are coming here.
This fall, international student applications at the University of Toronto were up 70% compared to last year. And numerous companies in Toronto are reporting “steady, double-digit increases” in the number of job applications from Americans.
This is exactly what I was getting at when I made the pithy prediction that Amazon is going to choose Toronto for HQ2. It’s about access to human capital (though I acknowledge the political reality of selecting a city outside of the US).
Perhaps here or here might work for a location.
Here is an excerpt from the Politico article that starts to speak to the importance of foreign-born workers in the US:
As of 2013, foreign-born workers in STEM fields—science, technology engineering and math—accounted for nearly a fifth of workers with bachelor’s degrees in the United States, 40 percent of those with master’s degrees and more than half of those with Ph.D.s. In the San Jose metro area, consisting largely of Silicon Valley, immigrants comprise more than 55 percent of adults who hold advanced degrees.
Here is a chart showing the US and Canadian metros with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents:
And here is a chart showing which metro areas receive the most venture capital dollars (in millions of US dollars):
As to be expected, Toronto, Vancouver and Miami lead in terms of the percentage of foreign-born residents. Though, I would bet that Toronto’s foreign-born population is far more diverse than those of Vancouver and Miami.
However, when you look at venture capital dollars invested, Toronto is nowhere near the top. Vancouver isn’t even on the list. And I suspect that some of you are surprised to see Miami sitting in between Chicago and Seattle (arguably a city that overperforms in tech relative to VC dollars invested). I was.
Perhaps Trump will help with this by making Canada great again.
We have a cultural bias toward homeownership in this country. Other countries have it too. We believe that homeownership is what you should aspire to.
In 2011, Statistics Canada pegged the homeownership rate at 69%. 9.2 million households out of a total of 13.3 million. Other more recent data suggests that it’s probably a bit lower, though still higher than that of the US since the financial crisis.
Regardless, more owners than renters.
I am not here to throw stones. I get it. I own my home. However, I do think it’s important to put this into perspective. Below is a chart from Trading Economics of homeownership rates in the G20:
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.
Richard Florida and Joshua Gans just published an article in Politico called: Trump Is Making Canada Great Again. The overarching argument is that as the US closes its borders, Canada benefits. The best and brightest from around the world are coming here.
This fall, international student applications at the University of Toronto were up 70% compared to last year. And numerous companies in Toronto are reporting “steady, double-digit increases” in the number of job applications from Americans.
This is exactly what I was getting at when I made the pithy prediction that Amazon is going to choose Toronto for HQ2. It’s about access to human capital (though I acknowledge the political reality of selecting a city outside of the US).
Perhaps here or here might work for a location.
Here is an excerpt from the Politico article that starts to speak to the importance of foreign-born workers in the US:
As of 2013, foreign-born workers in STEM fields—science, technology engineering and math—accounted for nearly a fifth of workers with bachelor’s degrees in the United States, 40 percent of those with master’s degrees and more than half of those with Ph.D.s. In the San Jose metro area, consisting largely of Silicon Valley, immigrants comprise more than 55 percent of adults who hold advanced degrees.
Here is a chart showing the US and Canadian metros with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents:
And here is a chart showing which metro areas receive the most venture capital dollars (in millions of US dollars):
As to be expected, Toronto, Vancouver and Miami lead in terms of the percentage of foreign-born residents. Though, I would bet that Toronto’s foreign-born population is far more diverse than those of Vancouver and Miami.
However, when you look at venture capital dollars invested, Toronto is nowhere near the top. Vancouver isn’t even on the list. And I suspect that some of you are surprised to see Miami sitting in between Chicago and Seattle (arguably a city that overperforms in tech relative to VC dollars invested). I was.
Perhaps Trump will help with this by making Canada great again.
We have a cultural bias toward homeownership in this country. Other countries have it too. We believe that homeownership is what you should aspire to.
In 2011, Statistics Canada pegged the homeownership rate at 69%. 9.2 million households out of a total of 13.3 million. Other more recent data suggests that it’s probably a bit lower, though still higher than that of the US since the financial crisis.
Regardless, more owners than renters.
I am not here to throw stones. I get it. I own my home. However, I do think it’s important to put this into perspective. Below is a chart from Trading Economics of homeownership rates in the G20:
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.
At the bottom of the list – with the lowest homeownership rates – are Germany and Switzerland. Germany appears almost evenly split between owners and renters. And Switzerland is more renters than owners.
Both of these countries are wealthy. Both have a higher GDP per capita than that of Canada according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Anecdotally, I can also say that some of the wealthiest people I know have made the decision to rent. They have simply decided to invest their capital elsewhere.
I’m not trying to insinuate any sort of correlation with these statements, but I am trying to draw attention to a cultural bias.
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.
At the bottom of the list – with the lowest homeownership rates – are Germany and Switzerland. Germany appears almost evenly split between owners and renters. And Switzerland is more renters than owners.
Both of these countries are wealthy. Both have a higher GDP per capita than that of Canada according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Anecdotally, I can also say that some of the wealthiest people I know have made the decision to rent. They have simply decided to invest their capital elsewhere.
I’m not trying to insinuate any sort of correlation with these statements, but I am trying to draw attention to a cultural bias.
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.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
