Planning Decisions, Inc.

THE BOTTOM LINE FROM CHUCK LAWTON

Where Have All the Migrants Gone?

Published Sunday March 16, 2008

This report takes the measure of this moment.
~ The Brookings Report

One of the central themes of The Brookings Report was the apparent discrepancy in Maine between fact and attitude. While our population was growing as a result of people from away “voting with their feet” by moving to Maine, we were “stuck: surprisingly pessimistic about [our] future.” We didn’t seem to appreciate the advantages we enjoyed.

And for that brief, shining “moment,” Brookings was right. During the period examined—1999 to 2004—Maine enjoyed annual net in-migration of between 7,000 and 10,000 people. But what of the years since? In 2005, according to Census estimates, our net in-migration fell to 2,400; in 2006, it dropped to zero, and in 2007 the inward movement turned to an outward movement of 5,400 people.

In four years, that’s a net swing of over 15,000 people—from a net gain of over 10,000 in 2003 to a net loss of over 5,000 in 2007. What gives? Has our vaunted “quality of life” suddenly turned sour? Or was Brookings all wet? Was our pessimism well founded, “surprising” only to the outsiders from Brookings?

The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is neither. Brookings wasn’t wrong, and whatever turn-of-the-millennium pessimism we might have felt had nothing to do with migration. The answer is far more prosaic—jobs. From 1999 to 2003, the annual rate of increase in total, non-farm employment in Maine equaled or exceeded the rate in New Hampshire. And it exceeded the rate in Massachusetts from 1999 to 2004. But in the three years since 2004, the rate of employment growth in New Hampshire and Massachusetts has exceeded the rate of growth in Maine.

Since 2004, Massachusetts has created over 83,000 jobs—a total increase of 2.6 percent. Since 2004, New Hampshire has created over 21,000 jobs for a total increase of 3.4 percent. In Maine over the same period, we’ve created only 5,700 jobs—a total increase of just 0.9 percent.

In short, quality of place is fine, but “it’s the economy, stupid!” The reason for our 15,000 swing in migration is opportunity. People—at least people looking for work—go where the jobs are being created.

So was Brookings wrong. Is “Quality of Place” just a self-serving rationalization for facts better explained by the high-tech bust of 1999-2000?

No, out-migration doesn’t mean that bright, talented, energetic people don’t want to live in Maine or that Maine’s clusters of high-tech firms don’t have bright futures. It simply means that “quality of place” isn’t enough by itself. And Brookings didn’t claim that it was. Economic prosperity, according to Brookings, requires action on all three fronts — maintaining and enhancing quality of place (primarily by controlling sprawl while redeveloping and enhancing downtowns and village centers), streamlining government (on both the spending and the revenue sides) and, thirdly, promoting business development (by nurturing the entrepreneurial energy already evident in our high-tech and creative clusters and by welcoming new businesses to join them).

The truly singular contribution of the Brookings Report was its explanation of economic prosperity as a system—a series of interconnected parts all of which must be present and working together to achieve success. Yes, Maine has “quality of place,” but it won’t create prosperity unless that quality is accompanied by a streamlined, vastly more efficient state and local government, a less volatile, more broadly shared and less contentious system of taxation and, finally, education and regulatory institutions designed to support business development and employment growth. Unless we make progress on all fronts together, we really aren’t making progress.

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