New report: Louisville, NOT Portland, is best U.S. city at luring and retaining educated young people

Well, this certainly explains why all those IdeaFestival sessions were sold out, as well as why we can’t get a table at La Coop.

Apparently, Louisville – not Portland – is THE 2012 city for young people, looking for fuller lives.

We’re not making this up, and Greg Fischer isn’t paying us to write this.

A report by two Portland State University professors issued last week finds that Louisville, not Portland, Ore., is the place young people increasingly are going to retire.

In “Is Portland Really the Place Where Young People Go to Retire? Migration Patterns of Portland’s Young and College-Education, 1980 to 2010,”  researchers found that Portland is a magnet for the young and college educated from across the country … and that most of them are working part-time or are in jobs that don’t really require degrees.

Why are they in Portland? Jason Jurjevich and Greg Schrock concluded they just like the city and were willing to make less money to be there.

From the executive summary:

For many metro areas, including Portland, being economically competitive in today’s knowledge and information economy depends on attracting and retaining young, college-educated (YCE) migrants. On this indicator, Portland has been most successful: since 1980, the Portland metropolitan region has attracted college-educated individuals the age of 40 at some of the country’s net migration rates in good economic times and bad.

Till now.

According to Jurjevich and Schrock’s research, which draws heavily on Census Bureau data (as you might have guessed), this obscure southern town called “Louisville” is doing a better job of attracting and keeping college-educated people under 40 years old.

The researchers studied Census data from 1980 to 2010, focusing on people ages 21 to 39, with college degrees.

As you can see in the chart above, Louisville trumps Portland and Seattle at “Demographic Effectiveness,” or getting non-natives to settle here, though the report never quites explains the methodology.

The chart shows Louisville with a higher demographic effectiveness rating, though we attracted about half as many grads as Portland.

When it’s all said and done, the report is about Portland. And Jurjevich and Schrock conclude Portland essentially is attracting young people from more expensive regional cities such as San Francisco, as well as educated immigrants from other nations.

But it’s fun to substitute “Louisville” everywhere it says “Portland” and realize for whatever reasons – music, arts, dining and a more affordable cost of living – outside researchers have determined Louisville is seriously more effective at attracting educated people than oft-touted cities such as Austin, much less Indy, Cincy or Nashville.

And that’s pretty amazing.