Thread: More people leave El Paso for elsewhere than other major cities

More people leave El Paso for elsewhere than other major cities

By Lindsey Anderson / El Paso Times / Follow @L_M_Anderson
POSTED: 07/22/2015 09:18:24 PM MDT

El Paso has the highest rate of people leaving for other places in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.

Bloomberg News first reported El Paso was the top U.S. city that Americans "ditched" from 2013 to 2014, and a subsequent El Paso Times analysis of census data shows the county led the nation's 100 largest metro areas in exodus rate the previous year as well.

Nearly 8,500 people left El Paso for other U.S. cities from 2013 to 2014, a net domestic migration loss of 1.02 percent of the city's population, according to census data. In 2013, El Paso reported a net loss of 1.37 percent, losing 11,437 more people to other U.S. communities than moved here.

"It's imperative that as a community we sit down and do a close analysis of these numbers and see if we can understand and engage our statisticians and economists on the core issues," Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Richard Dayoub said. "There's certainly a little bit of concern."

El Paso's slow job market and opportunities elsewhere might be driving the migration drop, experts said.

"In recent years, there have been other regions of Texas, as well as the Southwest in general, where economic growth has been faster than in El Paso," University of Texas at El Paso Economics and Finance Professor Tom Fullerton said.

"Whenever that occurs, that tends to draw people away from El Paso because they see job opportunities. They're strong magnets for mostly young, working-age people."

Jobs at oil fields in the Midland-Odessa area lure away El Pasoans, for example, Fullerton said.

"As the boom ebbs, El Paso may get some people back and may see deceleration" in the migration drop, he said.

Overall, the El Paso area's population edged slightly upward from 2013 to 2014, hitting nearly 836,700 people — yet many more people left the city than moved into it. The population growth was driven by births and by a small amount of immigration from other countries, the Census Bureau reported.

EXODUS RATE

Why do you think El Paso has the highest exodus rate in the nation? Read story

There's nothing to do in El Paso. There's better paying jobs elsewhere. It's a natural to leave the nest.

As domestic migration falls in El Paso, it is spurring population growth elsewhere in Texas.

The Austin area's net domestic migration rate rose more than 3 percent from 2013 to 2014, with more than 33,000 more people moving into the area than moving out. The San Antonio, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas all saw strong positive migration rates as well.

Young people are the most likely to leave a city in search of opportunities elsewhere, demographers said.

People with college degrees and those with a high school diploma or less are most likely to leave El Paso, as are people who are monolingual, UTEP Center for Inter-American and Border Studies Director Josiah Heyman said. The people in the middle and those who are bilingual are most likely to stay, Heyman said.

"That tells us something about the current limits of our economy, and it tells us something about the cultural features of the border and how we might build positives on those things," he said.

Migration rates help a city understand what services it needs to provide its residents, retired UTEP demographer Cheryl Howard said. If more young people are leaving a city than moving into it, maybe the city will need to turn a school into a senior center, Howard said.

Multiple factors push and pull people away from and toward cities, she said.

Jobs, family ties, climate and a city's strong identity — think New York City or Silicon Valley — are factors that could pull someone toward a city, Howard said. Factors like not being able to get a job or not feeling comfortable in a community may push people out of it, she said.

"El Paso has billed itself as a low-wage job place — call centers, service sectors, these are not high-tech jobs," she said. "We graduate a lot of engineers, a lot of people with high-tech degrees. Where are they going to work?"

Howard's 30-year-old daughter is an example of the many young, college-educated El Pasoans who are unemployed or underemployed, she said.

"There's plenty of kids like her," she said. "They get stuck in these dead-end jobs."

Many of her daughter's friends have fled El Paso for Austin, Dallas or New York, she said. Her daughter is working at a department store, she said.

"Although the El Paso economy has been doing better in recent years, it's still starting from a low baseline," Heyman said.

"Employment rates and incomes along the U.S. border region, except San Diego, are low compared to the rest of the country ... The evidence is people chose to live here because they like living here, but they do it in the face of many (economic) disincentives."

For a few years, El Paso saw positive numbers in what demographers call net domestic migration — the flow of people from one community for another.

For example, El Paso saw a net gain of 5,382 people in that category in 2011, according to the Census Bureau. But in 2012, the county saw a net decline of 656 people moving between U.S. communities; in 2013 that jumped to a decline of 11,437, and in 2014 it was a decline of 8,490.

The problem of outward migration isn't new for El Paso.

Almost 12 years ago to the day, the El Paso Times published a multipart series on "brain drain," exploring why 8,600 to 10,000 people on average left El Paso each year from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. The negative net domestic migration numbers seen the past two years are similar to the numbers seen in those earlier years.

Jobs and education were the answer to slowing the outward migration, city officials, demographers and young people said.

Some of the solutions posited at the time were realized; others weren't.

The city recognized "years ago" that it needed to make improvements to encourage migration and population growth, city spokesman Ramon Herrera said.

City redevelopment manager Jessica Herrera said El Paso is already making investments to draw people to the area, but it will take a few years for efforts to pay off.

"The improvements we're making on our infrastructure and development and really improving our overall quality of life is really going to be critical to drive that overall population and net migration into the city," Herrera said, mentioning Downtown revitalization projects, the Fountains at Farah shopping area and Montecillo housing development. "There are a lot of investments that we're starting to make and a lot of conversations about what can we do to keep people here and to make it more attractive."

Fullerton is optimistic that the exodus will ebb. He cited improvements in transportation, like work on Interstate 10; Downtown revitalization efforts; rising high school graduation rates; and growing health care services in the region.

As the standard of living in El Paso rises, so too will migration rates, he said.

Lindsey Anderson may be reached at 546-6345.

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_2...ere-than-other

http://www.alipac.us/f19/82-percent-...spanic-217701/

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@ http://www.alipac.us/f19/82-percent-...spanic-217701/