The Migration Patterns Of Creative And Educated Workers

February 10th, 2015

Technology is remapping our population. Richard Florida, editor of The Atlantic’s CityLab, has extensively researched the changing distribution of workers across America: “There have been very different patterns of migration by education and skill, with the highly educated and highly skilled going some places and the less educated and less skilled going to others.”

In Migration patterns are slowly sorting American cities into “educated” and “uneducated”, Florida shares an interactive map based on his and the Martin Prosperity Institute’s research: Net Domestic Migration by Educational Attainment. The map lets you click through and explore migration by educational attainment for each metropolitan area. The size and color of the overall bubbles shows the magnitude of net domestic migration, and the breakdown by education level is available when you click. Another interactive map by Forbes shows overall American migration patterns, allowing you to click on any county to see its inbound and outbound migration connections.

In Where Does The Creative Class Move?, Florida discusses the gravitation of various kinds of creative professionals (synthetic, symbolic and analytical) to certain cities like D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Houston, and Dallas.

The pattern is similar for all three types of creative-class workers. The analytic creative class had the largest total number of movers (613,251 in total), while the synthetic creative class was the least mobile (with only 12.4 percent having moved during the study period).

The U.S. has long been a magnet for the world’s creative-class workers. […] the U.S. attracted 38,035 creatives from Asia and another 14,313 from Europe between 2007 and 2011.

He then breaks down the cities favored by each creative sub-type.

Explore more of Richard Florida’s articles on urban evolution here.