It’s the hottest issue in our region right now. “Brain Drain”…the notion that we are losing our young educated professionals in droves, that Detroit has nothing to offer young professionals and no one has an answer on how to stop it. This was the front page story in the Detroit News two weeks ago “Brain Drain: CENSUS: 22,000 young adults leave Michigan” By Gary Trowbridge and Amy Lee.

In the article Kurt Metzger, CreateDetroit advisor and all around smart guy, is quoted as saying

“The things people claim attract young people, density, diversity, public transportation all those kinds of things we haven’t figured out transportation, we haven’t figured out urban reinvestment, and we sure haven’t figured out race. Even if the economy improves jobs might not be enough to keep young Michiganians home. Even in the best of times, in the late ’90s when the economy was really moving, we were still losing large numbers of young people, the economy wasn’t enough to keep them here.”

The writers claim

“While there is no expert consensus on the best way to attract and keep young professionals, Metzger said Michigan loses out on many fronts.”

I have to disagree on both fronts. There is consensus on the best way to attract and retain young professionals and SE Michigan doesn’t have to lose out on any front. The way to attract and retain young professionals is clear:

1. Develop a strong core creative community in the City of Detroit:
   Creatives want a sense of place that is attractive to them and their lifestyle. Walkable, diverse, 24/7 activity in a relatively dense place would be attractive to young professionals. Both Midtown Detroit and Downtown Detroit are rapidly becoming attractive in all of these attributes. Quality housing (lofts condos apartments) in both areas are coming onto the market in record numbers with strong demand while the remainder of the metro housing market languishes
   
2. Talent attracts talent
   Providing opportunities for talented young professionals to comingle connect and network is what attracts and retain talent. The Detroit News article states:
   “The 2000 census found about 1 million people ages 13-19 in Michigan. In 2005 — when that group was in the 18-24 category — their numbers had fallen by more than 22,000, based on the new population estimates.” The obvious hidden number there is that there are still 978,000 people between the ages of 23-29 in the state. Add the figures of young professionals between the ages of 30-35 and you have around 1.5 million young adults in the state…a good 60% of which are located in Southeast Michigan. Another figure…over 2 million people in Michigan have a bachelor’s degree or better. That means as a state we have more college degreed professionals than the the entire population of 17 different states. We have a dynamic talent pool…however it’s fragmented and dispersed across the region. Any opportunities to connect our talent pool to each other as well as interesting events, restaurants and attractions will make this region more attractive to current and prospective young professionals.
3. A dense job market:
   The majority of young professionals don’t choose to move to a city for a specific job but rather for a quality of life in a region that has a dense enough job market to allow people to find work opportunities both now and in the future. While our manufacturing industry is in decline, our creative industries and fast companies are booming. In one week’s time Google announced the opening of their AdWorks division offices in Ann Arborn bringing 1,000 new jobs to the state and ePrize announced they are adding 450 new jobs in the next few years. Everyday I meet with hiring professionals in advertising, marketing, media, architecture, and web-based businesses that are struggling to find talent. In one case recently a local company had to open a LA office just to tap into their talent pool. And as our aging professional, management and executive ranks (including IT and Engineering talent) begin to retire the worker shortage in knowledge-based jobs in Michigan is estimated to reach 40,000 by the year 2010. Not included in these figures are the continued uptick in start-up small businesses and fast companies that are booming in SE Michigan right now (Quicken, ePrize, Model D Media, Next Energy tenants, TechTown businesses). Job creation over the next 5 to 10 years will be fueled by entrepreneurial activity in SE Michigan.

While we have much work to do here to grow and diversify our economy and even though the lack of regional mass transit and negative perceptions of Detroit in local and national media persist, the news isn’t as bleak as the pundits make it out to be. There is clear evidence for optimism here in Detroit. CreateDetroit will continue to be at the forefront of the charge to promote Detroit as a dynamic place to live work and do business for young professionals. We invite your comments and input on what we can do to continue to grow our region.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Advocacy, News, Opinion, Policy, Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.