Exodus Starts: Millennials Ditch City Life

Tyler Durden's picture

The urban revival of America’s core inner cities has been a decades-long failed experiment, as deindustrialization coupled with failed liberal policies have created a growing problem of inequality and violent crime. Middle-class advancement was once localized in the core of America’s cities, but that is not so much the case today, as those areas are labeled a “barbell economy,” divided between highly-paid professionals and low-skill service workers.

Brookings Institution notes as early as the 1970s, middle-class income in the inner cities started to shrink more than anywhere else. Today, in most US inner cities, the cores are more unequal than their surrounding suburbs, noted geographer Daniel Herz.

As the failed American inner city experiment nears the latter stages before a collapsing point, a new report from Time could be the final nail in the coffin for some American inner cities, as the article suggests “cities have already reached ‘Peak Millennial’ as young people begin to leave.” 

According to the latest Census data, after years of growth, the population of millennials in Boston and Los Angeles have declined since 2015, as a mass exodus from city life starts to take shape. Other cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., are experiencing similar issues but not as severe while growth rates of millennials plateau.

Dowell Myers, professor of demography at the University of Southern California, called the peak of the millennial population in major U.S. cities back in 2015, with the largest birth group of the cohort turning 27 this year. To note, Myers could be a far better forecaster than Dennis Gartman, but we’ll leave that for another conversation.

Myers said at the critical age of 27 and above, that is the time when the millennial generation will participate in, what we call, ‘millennial flight’ to the suburbs. Such a trend could be the final nail in the coffin for some American inner cities, who were expecting the millennial generation to lead the charge in the revival process, as what we’ve learned from Myers– that may not be the case.

The Times explains how Myers coined the term— ‘peak millennial’. Interesting, the plateauing of millennial populations are occurring in East Coast cities, while the West Coast is still drawing in young people.

To see which cities have reached “peak millennial” — a term Myers coined —we analyzed a decade of Census data through 2016. We found that while tech hubs like San Francisco and Seattle are still drawing young people, large East Coast cities, like New York and D.C., are fast approaching peak millennial, with plateauing populations of those born between 1980 and 1996.

 

And then there are cities like Boston, which already appear to have reached their peak. Boston lost roughly 7,000 millennials in 2016, after a record high of 259,000 the previous year.

In the explanation of millennial flight from America’s inner cities, Jim Rooney, president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce said, “they’re doing what every generation does — they get married, start a family and think about having a backyard and looking at school systems” in the suburbs.

While that is definitely true, and what we’ve mentioned above, millennials tend to live in core inner cities, where inequality and violent crime are sometimes out of control. Also, many millennials are becoming priced out of real estate in these areas, as wage stagnation is drowning many millennials into more and more debt, on top of their already ballooning balance sheet of liabilities. Think student loans….

In Boston, the millennial peak was confirmed in 2014 through 2015, as it appears it’s all downside from here. Rooney’s findings conclude millennials in the region are being priced out of homes with the median home in Boston around $561,000, according to Zillow.

In Chicago, the millennial plateau occurred in 2014 through 2015, hitting a high of 814,000 millennials in 2015 and falling by a few hundred in 2016. Jack Lavin, president of the area’s Chamber of Commerce said millennials are moving to the suburbs to start a family— ditching urban areas. Nevertheless, the article does not mention— the out of control homicides adding to the fear of city life.

In Los Angeles, the millennial peak was confirmed in 2015, which saw a decline of about 2,500 millennials in 2016. “It’s hard for millennials to achieve a middle-class lifestyle that they think they deserve”, said Myers. With that being said, millennials are moving out.

Bottomline: The ruling elite and their inner-city playground planners who were expecting the millennial generation to revive their decades-long failed experiment are about to come to harsh terms with the reality of a millennial exodus.

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greenskeeper carl's picture

Fuck that, the LAST thing I want is those things moving out where I live, and where I plan to retire. Stay urban where you belong. Between the under 30 crowd and the dindus, most cities in this country are fucked, and I don't want the rot spreading.

gmrpeabody's picture

Maybe they are just coming to their senses...

shitshitshit's picture

1- they have no money

2- they may be herding goats in the mountains

3- those who staid behind will be sucking taxi drivers cocks in the cellars before the decade is over to make ends meat  (pun intended)

bigdumbnugly's picture

and with them comes their cuckish liberal voting habits.

please stay away.

 

The_Juggernaut's picture

Every one of those charts shows a peak in 2010 or 2011 followed by an increase.  ...but this time it's different?  lmao.

bamawatson's picture

different ? same ?

either way, quoting previous commenter, "please stay away" 

https://vimeo.com/238406565

Dindu Nuffins's picture

If I see a truck delivering a load of avocados to the local supermarket, that sombitch getting firebombed.

Gold...Bitches's picture

Fuck - I was hoping they would stay concentrated and not spread their communism all over the place.  Just like the CA exodus that has been going on for decades - they leave because its too expensive yet never consider that it was the very people they voted in and the things they enacted into law that made it unlivable.  Then they start advocating for the same shit when they move somewthere affordable and turn the next place they live into the same shithole they moved from.

canisdirus's picture

And the people that left CA were mostly the locust people. They descended on CA and destroyed it, then continued on to do the same thing in other places. My family was in Los Angeles before these people came (in fact, the street they lived on was named after them) and drove my grandparents (and some great grandparents) into the suburbs. The people you believe are Californians are simply locusts that came from the east and invaded the state, then when they ruined it they moved on to destroy nearby states after they made it unlivable.

Lorca's Novena's picture

Spot On!

 

Some locusts come from the South as well...

ZD1's picture

The locusts came from the East? Maybe some, but the majority of the destructive locusts came from the south...of the border. Much of LA is like an ugly, dirty suburb of Mexico.

libertyanyday's picture

invaders from the south own LA......carpetbaggers didnt cause that cesspool.

Offthebeach's picture

Harvard Fk Dana ruined it ans The Okies gave the neck shot.

tyrone's picture

thats why you need to be careful and use DD before buying a home.  Sooner or later, we all move elsewhere.  If you chose carefully then you shall reap the profit of a good choice when you sell and move on.

canisdirus's picture

It’s due to the birth rates during their birth years. It’s also due to everyone being priced out. We could afford a decent house deep in the suburbs/exurbs, but couldn’t have touched one in the city. Even a very high income isn’t enough to afford in a major city these days.

swmnguy's picture

Thanks for stating what ought to be obvious to all of us here on ZH.  All these articles on ZH bemoaning the financial choices of "Milliennials" somewhat refute themselves.  Why aren't the Millennials buying houses, cars, but mostly financial instruments, the way their parents did?  Because kids these days are no damned good?

Kids these days are doing the same exact thing kids have always done.  They're making decisions and choices based on the options presented to them by the world.  It wouldn't make any damned sense for them to do what their parents did; the situation they face isn't the same.  

Although to be honest, my kids and their friends are doing pretty similar things to what I did when I was their age 30 years ago.  Trying to figure out how to get ahead in a USA where the cultural mythologies don't work anymore, and don't resemble the reality we see before us.  Over the intervening 30 years, financialization has only worsened the situation, but the trend is the same.

Ghost of Porky's picture

They're gonna have to build a shitload of Starbucks out in the middle of nowhere.

sleigher's picture

Or learn the wonders of a percolater.  Best Coffee Ever.

Wrenching Away's picture

Or try an Aeropress also, is cheap, and makes amazing coffee one cup at a time.

83_vf_1100_c's picture

1 cup at a time? 1 cup won't even get me moving in the morning and I drink coffee all day. Who has time to stop doing stuff ang spend 20 minutes every 30 minutes futzing around with some faggy press fron France.  Big drip machine. Dump in grounds, water, push the button and coffee for hours.

  Millenials are not moving to the country. Suburbia is not the country. Most of them call AAA for a flat tire. Pretty sure wrangling implements and bleeding air out of the diesel tractor injectors, loading grain and hay, repairing a broke well pump in the cold and dark etc are more than they are up to. If any of them find it suits them, I think they will fit in given a short period of political indoctrination.  No Starbucks, no Uber, a big Saturday night is either a 2 hr rd trip drive to what passes for the big city or the local Hog Festival, pasture party or just as likely out in the shop with a friend fixing whatever is broke.  Shooting skeet out in the back field is decent entertainment. The keys to my cars are laying on the floor boards, sleep with the doors unlocked. Totally worth it.

Food Loaf Junkie's picture

Don't forget shooting skunks in the summer and coyotes in the winter (after the fur is prime), but I do lock my doors at night, evil exists everywhere.

libertyanyday's picture

haw many here even no what  a  coffee pot that percolates is ?  hot mud 24/7

buttmint's picture

....any young, female Millenial interested in investing in an Ugandan OIstrich Farm / Ranchero?

 

Please send me a pm....

 

SDShack's picture

I know a few millenials that still live with Mom & Dad in our neighborhood, and I am becoming more and more convinced that they are the schizophrenia generation. Upon leaving HS, most seem to want to live in the downtown urban centers for all the nightlife, college access and mass transit. Any jobs they have just allow them to scrape by at best. Because they have no money, they shack up with a half dozen other like minded snowflakes. As they get older and still poorer, they realize the flaws in their urban utopia, so they lurch to the opposite extreme.

I literally know several that want to now move to the country and live on a self-sustaining commune/farm, off the grid, environmentally correct, etc. Unfortunately, none of them have the work effort, let alone the experience or even the exposure to what it takes to live off the land like that. So I suspect that they will sour quickly on that life when they realize there isn't an ap for gardening, canning, raising, killing and processing fowl and livestock, not to mention the work to have electricity, heat, water and sanitation, plus all the maintenance and fixit jobs they will have to do including machinery, home, barn, stables, pastures, etc. When that reality hits, then I suspect they will try to return to the burbs, but in a much diminished capacity.

Oh, BTW, less then half of these millenials want children. So this belief that many people have about them wanting to go straight to the burbs to raise a family doesn't jibe with their selfish reality either.  

algol_dog's picture

Depressing, isn't it ... A lost generation in a lost world. 

Automatic Choke's picture

They don't need a work ethic to move to the country and live on a commune....they can be artists, and hang around to show everybody else (who will do all the communal work) how sensitive they are.   A good commune always needs sensitive artists, right?

 

DownWithYogaPants's picture

Note to commenter a couple back:  Having children is one of the most selfish things people do.  It's to pass on the genes.  So you can't say "oh look how they have to sacrifice for their children" because they are in reality sacrificing for themselves which of course is no sacrifice at all.

He who does not understand this does not understand the science of evolution.  It is without a doubt true. Go to your bathroom mirror.  Flair your nostrils and make ape noises.  You will see an ape face because that's what humans are.  

bookwatch's picture

You obviously don't have children or you would realize the sacrifices parents make for their kids. Every day.  Parents may be selfish when they give birth, but raising children requires selflessness. 

Oh, and Richard Dawkins is a eugenicist, as was Darwin. 

libertyanyday's picture

the 60's didnt work...........we dont need to try again, venezuela is real time.

ElTerco's picture

We will all be lost in just a few more years.

MusicIsYou's picture

Millennials think somebody else is gonna till the ground for them providing food while they get to sit on their millennial throne. They think it will magically happen for them and all they have to do is move to it.

Killdo's picture

too bad most millenials don't know plants need to be watered to survive

Semi-employed White Guy's picture

That's OK cuz Brawndo's got electrolytes.

Dindu Nuffins's picture

It's got what plants crave.

Drater's picture

...water is for toilets dumbass

Scornd's picture

those farms just take advantage of them usda tax credit not a living wage. its a farm no one makes money.

Scornd's picture

WE DONT OWN LAND. WTF , OVER...? dont you see the perfect storm has been formed? no u wont until you see people starving or are starving.

canisdirus's picture

You have to respect that they are at least responsible enough to not have children they can’t afford to raise...

DipshitMiddleClassWhiteKid's picture

most of them are moving back home with their parents

 

its mathematically impossible to "get ahead" unless youre earning 500K+ a year and have no debt and can stack bread. 

 

living on your own or with roommates in a big city..even if you have a "good" job..is a bad idea. 

 

wages dont need to go up. the cost of living needs to drop down to earth/reality.

 

asset inflation is being done on purpose by the (((elites))) to kill off the population and usher in their NWO utopia.

 

i just bought a 2nd car to use as a track car for SCCA events. fuck growing up!

 

 

 

fattail's picture

Ifthe millenials don't get what they want, they are not afraid to quit and move on.  Which is something I admire and wish I might have been more mobile.

FreeNewEnergy's picture

I'm out in (moderate) farm country, and I can attest that the buying of homes is brisk, while the number of actual farms is in decline (upstate NY, egulations, taxes, etc.).

When the milleniials do come - and they will - they'll last about three years and then the kids of the "good old boys" will buy up more land and homes and farms at reduced prices.

I'm an old fart, but I do know a good number of 20 and 30-somethings. The ones in the city can't do jack. Their counterparts in the country all have skills, either working on cars, understanding farm dynamics, able to fix just about anything, do home improvements, etc. The country kids eat the city kids' lunches.

I was one of those urban kids, but in a better time. Made my living self-employed, moved to the country when not just the city (Rochester, NY), but the suburbs (Irondequoit in my case) began to decline, quickly, with an influx of minorities, none of them Asian.

Glad I made the move. I'd have shot somebody by now if I continued living in the suburbs.

booboo's picture

It's all the Lexus and BMW holiday commercials, all them city girls are pining for a house and a circumcised penis.

currentsea's picture

you old fucking geezers should of thought twice before you blew us out of your nutsacks.  there will be no productivity to tax to fund your hospital bills anyhow...  so perhaps you'll be the ones rotting.

shitshitshit's picture

We'll tax your crypto to compensate, young geezer. 

currentsea's picture

go fucking die already.  

shitshitshit's picture

I want to see you giving head to taxi drivers first. That will be my last earthly joy. 

johngaltfla's picture

Shit, shit, we'll be too busy with our Viagra hard ons fucking currentsea's young girlfriend with experience and vigor so we don't care about his Uber blowjob fantasies.