Census data shows that Broome County is getting grey around the sides. Jennifer Fusco reports at the Press & Sun-Bulletin that the median age in the county has crept up by 2 years over the past decade. That means the median is now 40.2, due to longer lives and fleeing youngsters:
"We're actually older than the rest of the state," said Mark Reisinger, a geography professor at Binghamton University. "It shows the inability of this area to keep young people. Even though we have this large college population, we just can't keep it." As many of the area's larger companies have scaled back over the past 10 years, good-paying jobs have been lost, forcing many to leave the area. "What sorts of economic opportunities are there in the area?" said Pike Oliver, senior lecturer for the Cornell University Program in Real Estate. "They're not really that strong. Your big companies aren't really hiring, and that's not really a draw for young families."
Rochester is also experiencing the phenomenon of younger people heading for greener pastures, reports Sean Dobbin at the Democrat and Chronicle:
New demographic data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau show that Monroe County's workforce has dwindled, while the region's migratory population gains came only from the elderly and middle- and high-school-aged youths. Every segment of people born between the years of 1936 and 1990 showed some level of migration away from Monroe County over the past 10 years, with the largest exodus coming from those born between 1966 and 1980. In 2000, there were about 145,000 county residents who were born in that time frame. By last year, that same group had dwindled to roughly 135,000.
So how do you fix it? Some solutions are offered in our series of reports about brain drain, and our radio program about the same topic. And Rust Wire points out the "Talented Divident Prize," being offered by CEOS for Cities, which is offering $1 million to a city that increases its number of college grads.
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