STL Registers With Young College Grads
Date Posted: December 30, 2014
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, News,
Editor’s Note: While St. Louis has not yet resonated as a happening place to live with young college grads on a par with Houston, Nashville, Austin or Denver, we have cracked the top 10 according to this recent article from the New York Times.
From the New York Times: As metropolitan areas vie for these residents, some are attracting them at a higher rate than the national average. The rate over the last dozen years does not necessarily reflect the current percentage. For example, Denver’s percentage in this age group is 7.5, higher than Houston’s and more than the national average of 5.2 percent, but lower than that of Washington, the Bay Area and Boston.
“There is a very strong track record of places that attract talent becoming places of long-term success,” said Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard and author of “Triumph of the City.” “The most successful economic development policy is to attract and retain smart people and then get out of their way.”
The economic effects reach beyond the work the young people do, according to Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “The New Geography of Jobs.” For every college graduate who takes a job in an innovation industry, he found, five additional jobs are eventually created in that city, such as for waiters, carpenters, doctors, architects and teachers.
“It’s a type of growth that feeds on itself — the more young workers you have, the more companies are interested in locating their operations in that area and the more young people are going to move there,” he said.