South By North Strategies, Ltd.

A briefing report from The Brookings Institution uses new data from the Census Bureau to show how the recession has slowed long-distance mobility and the movement of educated young people from one part of the country to another.

In mid-decade, top migration destinations numerically for young adults were interior West growth centers—Riverside, CA and Phoenix—and a mix of economically vibrant places like Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte.
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By the late 2000s, four of the top five mid-decade magnets were replaced.  Austin rose to the lead, and two other relatively vibrant Texas metros, Dallas and Houston, moved up the list. Other rising areas like Denver, Seattle and Portland, tended to be knowledge-based cities with lifestyles attractive to young people.
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Yet rates of gain for many popular metros are generally not as high as in mid-decade and many older Northern and coastal areas continue to hold on to young people who would otherwise be fleeing to opportunities elsewhere.
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The recent more tentative migration patterns of the younger and “best and brightest” segments of our population are holding back the free flow of human and social capital that has made our society more vital and dynamic than most of our developed country peers. This slowdown, in addition to the decline in immigration can be expected to pick up when the economy revives.  But if it takes too long, we run the risk of creating a “lost generation” of young adults, the likes of which we have not seen for some time.