Getting back to the subject at hand, when choosing a place to find decent work, continually improve yourself through lifelong education, and live comfortably without destroying your bank account, a good number of factors need to be taken into account, beginning with whether or not you choose to pursue a low-wage or high-wage career, whether you choose to settle in or excel.
Growing up in a Rust Belt city in the 50s, 60s and 70s, as well as living and working in different cities located in different areas of the Sun Belt has given me a good number of unique insights into job and education opportunities as well as living expenses in regions of the U.S. that are enormously different from each other.
I have friends and relatives that I grew up with who earned a good living and bought fine homes in safe neighborhoods, with only a high school diploma, from working in steel plants and automobile factories in the Rust Belt. Today people with only a high school diploma do not have a chance to earn a decent living unless they become successful self-employed entrepreneurs or pick up a construction or home-improvement trade through some sort of apprenticeship. In short, the Rust Belt and its accompanying good jobs for the everyman have long ago died, and the unfortunate reality is that they are not coming back.
According to research on U.S. demographics published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency U.S. Department of Homeland Security (see http://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/27086?id=6022) Rust Belt cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, which have lost half of their populations in recent decades, will continue to depopulate for the foreseeable future. Job opportunities in these cities are dismal, but the cost of buying or renting a home in the Rust Belt is very reasonable when compared to Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. Plus, excellent education opportunities are still available through such institutions as the University of Michigan, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and the University of Buffalo.
People who get educated in the Rust Belt often migrate to high-growth cities and job opportunities elsewhere. It’s difficult to size up precisely why some cities experience serious brain drains and why other cities become magnets for growing industries that hire the best and brightest. Scholarly economists, political scientists, and sociologists write extensively about the whys and hows for city and regional growth and retrogressive patterns, and they all have different theories that one can easily get lost in. My research here is based on personal human experience and a good amount of reading, but not enough to steadfastly refute or agree with the scholars.Some reports claim that Rust Belt cities are in a revival phase.
The American Institute of Economic Research has a College Destinations Index that rates college towns based on academics, quality of life, and professional opportunity. Its recent November 2013 rankings shows Pittsburgh and Buffalo ranked three and four respectively as leading mid-size metro areas for college students. Cleveland was ranked 16th. Baltimore was ranked 8th under major metro areas.[i] I’m skeptical. I will say, that these cities have a lower cost of living, when compared to major metropolises, making them good places for students to choose for their college years. But after they graduate from college, the smartest with modern 21st century skills will ultimately wind up pursuing their careers and buying homes in cities and towns that have much better opportunities to excel beyond the normal.
Cities like Austin, Texas, as an example, or Washington, D.C., or Palo Alto, California. . . Cowen, in his book “Average is Over,” noted that college graduates gravitate to areas where there is a high percentage of people with college degrees.
Some of the winning areas are
Raleigh, North Carolina, San Francisco, and Stamford, Connecticut, where over
40 percent of adult residents have college degrees. You can add select areas of
New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to this list, although those cities as a
whole do not show uniform progress in recruiting educated individuals. Some of
the loser cities include Bakersfield, California, and Youngstown, Ohio, where
the percentage of educated adults is less than one-fifth. It should come as no surprise
that the cities with high levels of education tend to have much lower levels of
unemployment. [ii]
According to NerdWallet, a modern advisory service and
publisher out of San Francisco that compiles and analyzes data in interesting
ways to inform its audience about important financial issues , the top ten
educated cities in America, in order, are Bethesda, Maryland; Palo Alto,
California; Brookline, Massachusetts; Potomac, Maryland; Needham, Massachusetts;
Cupertino, California; Upper Arlington, Ohio; Westport, Connecticut; and Newton,
Massachusetts. These places have industries and educational
resources that draw educated residents.[iii]
[ii]
Tyler Cowen. (2013). Average is Over. Dutton.
[iii]
Divya. (June 24, 2013). Most Educated Places in America. NerdWallet. http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/2013/educated-places-america/.
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