When I first read this article, I thought it was a joke -
Kalamazoo's economy has been booming by pretty much any definition I can think of in recent years, and its population has been slowly growing. I really wanted to see the data behind these claims, because something didn't add up. I wasn't even going to post it, because it sounded so bogus.
#1 in the country for brain drain? No way.
We have WMU, K-College, KVCC. Stryker, Bronson, Pfizer, Zoetis, Graphics Packaging, Landscape Forms, dozens of engineering firms, all thriving & growing. The region can't keep up with housing demand, home values are rising, etc...
Quote:
Worst Spot for U.S. Brain Drain Gets Hope as Covid Vaccine Hub
By Vincent Del Giudi
December 31, 2020
The old factory town of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has become a center for Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing. That may help the area’s economy turn a corner after some tough years. Ranked highest in this year’s Bloomberg Brain Drain Index of population loss of top talent, Kalamazoo has struggled like the rest of the U.S. with the job-crushing pandemic. But the city got some hope when Pfizer Inc.’s factory in adjacent Portage recently became a key distribution point for the vaccine. The drugmaker and German partner BioNTech SE plan to deliver 200 million doses to the U.S. by July...
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It's a false narrative. Yes the pandemic has hurt Kalamazoo like everywhere else. Restaurants, bars, and recreation, hospitality, & service-related businesses have closed, sometimes permanently. But there's no way we have lost the most jobs out of ANY METRO in the entire country.
Well now yesterday, this article came out, and it confirms my suspicions that something seemed off in the study.
Quote:
Kalamazoo researchers dispute Bloomberg ‘brain drain’ report
Kyle Mitchell | Wood TV 8
January 05, 2021
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) — Researchers in Kalamazoo are disputing a report that gave the metro area the worst ranking on the Bloomberg Brain Drain Index. The ranking lists communities that have lost the most highly educated workers in recent years. The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research discovered the error. President Michael Horrigan says they are working to contact Bloomberg and have recalculated some numbers.
“They were comparing apples and oranges,” Horrigan said.
He says his organization noticed a substantial mistake in how the list was compiled...
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Apparently, the number-crunchers at Bloomberg failed to consider that the defined Kalamazoo-Portage MSA area used to include Van Buren County, but sometime between 2015 - 2019, Van Buren County was removed from the MSA (by the American Community Survey definition - which Bloomberg used for this report). So they were comparing between two disparate population areas, giving them a number that falsely indicated a population decline of 21% between 2015 and 2019 when there was really a 2% population increase.
Thankfully we have institutions like The Upjohn Institute to keep on eye on false reports like this. And they should know - for starters, they are one of the most preeminent employment research institutions in the entire world. Second - and this is important - they are LOCAL. They actually pay attention to what happens in the Kalamazoo-Portage metro.
Thankfully, this mistake was noticed, and hopefully, Bloomberg issues a correction and an apology quickly. Hopefully must people don't take much stock in these near-pointless rankings, but damage could have been done.