Posted: November 01, 2019 by Kelly Murphy-Redd

What Everyone Thinks About Millennials Isn’t Necessarily True
And How That Can Help Our Community

At the beginning of this decade millennials were reported as moving to cities in droves. This helped lead an urban revival according to an article in the Wall Street Journal last month.

We’ve all continually heard that millennials want big-city life. It is a quality of life issue with them. They want cultural diversity, a vibrant nightlife, a myriad of restaurant, retail and entertainment options. The well-paying jobs are there.

However, new studies show that millennials are moving to the suburbs, small cities and towns by the tens of thousands. 2018 was the fourth consecutive year for cities to see their young-adult population shrink. In 2018, cities with more than half a million people lost 27,000 residents collectively from the ages of 25 to 39. In 2017 these cities lost 54,000 residents in the same age group.

The cities mentioned as losing the largest number of millennials were New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Washington and Portland, Oregon.

Why are these people moving away from cities? Quality of life, schools, cost of living, and traffic/parking were the reasons listed.

Houses cost too much in the big cities. Millennials are having children and now care about the quality of schools. They want room to grow. They are concerned about raising their children in a safe environment. They don’t want to fight traffic and hunt for parking places when they have to go to work, pick up children and ferry them around to various activities. Day care is described as a second mortgage payment in the big city.

More and more people, not just millennials, have jobs they can do from any location. Remote workers, freelancers and people starting their own business can live anywhere and they are choosing to do that in large numbers.

The attraction of good schools, bigger homes at a lower cost, room to breathe, less time on the road and not being anonymous in a city of millions, has been a boon to smaller communities.
Some of the recipients of this exodus from the city include Boise, Idaho and Charlotte, North Carolina. There is nothing to say we cannot benefit as well. We already are to some extent, I’m sure.

So the trips our governor, Ron DeSantis has been making to New York and Chicago make a lot of sense. It is reported he is going there to present Florida’s business climate, quality of life and workforce.

We can also market to millennials the other attractions they find important enough to make life-changing moves.