Cleveland isn’t growing during crisis — just losing fewer people
CLEVELAND — Cleveland has an opportunity to grow its population as the pandemic continues to push people away from large, high-cost cities.
But it hasn’t happened yet, at least not in large numbers.
And it probably won’t happen if the city doesn’t make a more concerted effort to attract young, mobile workers here, according to some experts.
Recent news from LinkedIn, the professional-networking website, suggested that Cleveland was outperforming other cities when it comes to attracting new residents and workers during the pandemic.
According to the company, Cleveland ranked fifth among U.S. cities in net resident gain between April 2020 and February 2021, the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when many employees were told to work from home and many subsequently decided to relocate away from pricey, congested metro areas.
LinkedIn compared the number of arrivals with departures and calculated the cities with the largest changes to create its ranking. Cleveland, with a 6% improvement, was outperformed only by Salt Lake City, Jacksonville, Richmond and Sacramento.
A closer look at the data, however, suggests that Cleveland hasn’t experienced a growth in population — it’s just losing fewer people. According to LinkedIn, Cleveland’s inward migration in 2019 was 82% of its outward migration — in other words, for every 100 people who left, 82 people arrived. During the pandemic, that ratio improved to 87%, according to LinkedIn.
“Still some net loss of talent, but not as much,” said George Anders, a senior editor with LinkedIn. “In fact, compared against migration trends in other metros, that was one of the most striking improvements.”
The LinkedIn data is confirmed, and amplified, by the work of Stephan Whitaker, a policy economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, who presented his data during a recent online FedTalk session.
Whitaker’s analysis is much broader than LinkedIn’s. Whereas LinkedIn tracked changes in the self-reported locations contained within members’ online profiles, Whitaker examined location information tracked by consumer credit agency
Equifax — a much larger database, and also more likely to include people from a broader demographic group.
Whitaker, too, has found evidence that fewer people are leaving Cleveland and other, similarly sized metro areas with lower costs.
What he hasn’t found is data that suggests more people are moving to Cleveland — at least not in large numbers, at least not yet.
“There is a potential for substantial gains to a lot of regions,” said Whitaker, a graduate of Willoughby South High School who has a doctorate in public policy from the University of Chicago.
Whitaker did not track Cleveland data, specifically. Instead, he grouped U.S. cities into several categories — large and high cost (New York, San Francisco, etc.); large and low cost (Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, etc.); mid-size metros and small metros.
What his data found:
■ People are leaving highcost, large cities, including New York, San Francisco and Boston. The reasons for the departures may be many, but the trend toward remote work is definitely driving some of the departures.
■ Many lower-cost cities saw an increase in arrivals from high-cost cities — including Austin, Raleigh, Las Vegas and Atlanta. But those cities were already seeing population gains from places like New York and Los Angeles.
■ Numerous other cities, including Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, also saw an increase in migration from high-cost cities. And that increase reversed a trend that previously saw more of those residents leaving for places like New York and Chicago.
Whitaker believes there is an opportunity for places like Cleveland to take advantage of these trends.
“The pandemic has loosened that connection between location and work,” he said. “There hasn’t been a huge change in just these first nine months, but if remote workers follow new patterns, there could be a big opportunity.”
Marianne Crosley, the president and CEO of the Cleveland Leadership Center, has spent nearly two decades working on the crisis of Cleveland’s declining population. The pandemic, she said, is providing a unique moment in time to take action.
She is part of a new effort that is bringing together numerous community groups, including Team NEO, Destination Cleveland, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Engage! Cleveland, Global Cleveland and others, to discuss ways to attract new residents to Cleveland.
“Although we have nothing official released from Census, I don’t think anyone will be surprised if the Census shows population loss,” she said. “We have come so far as a city but we cannot lose ground. We have been toiling at this for years. We need to make measurable progress.”
Whitaker’s data estimates that there are approximately 17 million employees eligible to work from home in the nation’s most expensive cities. If 5% of them decide to relocate because of the pandemic, and 2.5% of them decide to come to Cleveland, the region could pick up as many as 26,000 new employees.
Many mobile workers are choosing to relocate relatively close to the large cities where their employer is based — simply moving to the suburbs, for example, or to a large city nearby that’s not as expensive (think Milwaukee, 90 miles north of Chicago.)
Cleveland isn’t that close to any large, high-cost cities, which might make accessible, affordable transportation options important, including rail service and nonstop flights to urban centers, said Whitaker.
Other factors at play might include cultural and recreational amenities, and low-cost housing, although Whitaker noted that housing costs aren’t very different once high-cost metro areas are eliminated from consideration.
“A lot of people move for family reasons,” he said. “You could look at places that have been sending workers to high cost, large metros – if those people still have family connections, they may take this opportunity now to go back to that place.”
He said it’s too early to say if the changes in migration — away from large, highcost cities — will be permanent. He suggests waiting until six months after most offices have reopened to try to determine whether pandemic-related changes of address are temporary or whether people will still feel the draw of places like New York and San Francisco.
Crosley, however, said the region can’t wait to find out if the trends are short-term or permanent.
“We’ve got the opportunity now,” she said. “Let’s harness our resources, let’s look forward and let’s go.”