Tuesday, March 22, 2011

2011 Metro Migration Forecast

I intended to write a pithy post about another indication that Pittsburgh's economy is accelerating out of the recession:

The report includes a comprehensive index of current retailer demand and ChainLinks Power Rankings for the top ten U.S. markets in terms of expected overall health for 2011. According to ChainLinks Research Director, Garrick Brown, “The Washington DC market topped our Power Rankings, not only because of the region’s low unemployment and shopping center vacancy rates, but because of continued high levels of retailer demand.” Among the other U.S. markets to land in ChainLinks’ Power Rankings are the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Boston, San Diego, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Seattle and Pittsburgh.

The report is available online and I decided to look deeper into the press release. Among economic indicators listed are numbers for "2011 Forecast In-Migration" from Moody's (Check out Moody's "Jobs Forecast" hosted at USA Today). Unfortunately, Pittsburg [sic] is N/A. The population is available (2,431,000) and looks like a projection. The 2010 Census count is 2,356,285. That's about a gain of about 75,000 people. I doubt that is from a boom in births.

You can take a look at the migration forecast for all the other cities. For example, Cleveland is expected to lose 11,000 people via churn. The jobs forecast for that metro is equally dire.

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