Calgary: Brain Drain Myth or Reality Revisited
While Calgary politicians and media focus on the negative aspec of young post-secondary grads having to leave Calgary upon graduation to find jobs, I wonder if this isn’t in fact a good thing. Isn’t moving to another city or country to work, live and play, a part of some young adults’ ongoing education?
With some of our students having lived their entire lives in Calgary, maybe it is time for some of them to explore what other cities and countries have to offer. And sure, some of them will never return, but I expect many will, given Calgary is one of the most attractive places to live in Canada, North America and the world - especially for those who want to have a family.
Link: CBC: Calgary’s slogan should be “The Family Friendly City!”
Calgary also has an amazing array of year-round recreational opportunities that appeal to young professionals.
Calgary is home to numerous summer farmer / craft markets, as well as various ethnic and arts festivals that makes it very attractive to young professionals. This is the Inglewood Night Market.
Calgary is also home to several pedestrian streets and historic districts like Kensington Village, Inglewood, Stephen Avenue, 17th Avenue, 4th Street in Mission, 1st Ave in Bridgeland that are very attractive to young professionals.
Leaving is essential
In fact, this idea is supported in a discussion paper “Why Calgary?” recently published by the Mount Royal University’s Institute for Community Prosperity CityXLab which states, “It is important to acknowledge that for many young adults, leaving Calgary to pursue personal and professional growth is essential.
This time spent away from Calgary provides rich context and perspectives beyond their comfort zone. In fact, encouraging young adults to explore and discover is critical to their learning and development, and to our city.”
It also states there is no data to conclusively demonstrate Calgary is bleeding young people. Indeed, the media is caught up in its vortex of negativity, cherry picking a few students who are leaving the city, to scare Calgarians into thinking there is a ‘brain drain” happening in our city. They provide no data to back up their stories, because there isn’t any.
I know of two young accounting students, both recent graduates at Mount Royal University who were immediately hired by downtown accounting firms. I expect students graduating with skills in software development, data analysis and other digital roles are being snapped up by Calgary tech firms and the same in the health sector.
It all depends on who you talk to.
Link: Why Calgary? Discussion paper
Perhaps the reason for the decline in the population of young adults in Calgary is that the city is no longer a “Brain Magnet” i.e. the city no longer is attracting hordes of young engineers, geologists, accountants and business student from across Canada who used to come to Calgary every year to work in the corporate headquarters of the thriving oil patch. That is different than a “Brain Drain.”
The good news is that Calgary is still a “brain magnet” for international immigrants.
Twitter Feedback
When I first posted that the “brain drain was a myth” on Twitter I immediately got some push back from followers, with some new data on how indeed there is an increase in Alberta students are leaving the province and how the growth in the population of 15 to 34 years olds is definitely declining in the Calgary. However, there is also evidence that intraprovincial migration while small was positive again in 2020.
Calgary’s has continued to experience a healthy population growth during the downturn, with international migration continuing to be the major driver. Unfortunately Caglary is not as attractive to young Canadians as a place to start their career i.e. decline in interprovincial migration. (graph credit: Calgary Economic Development)
Feedback from others:
An urban analyst who asked to remain anonymous shared these insights with me in an email.
“From the data, the conclusion is pretty clear the 15-24 cohort is stagnating, and the 25-34 cohort showed a notably decrease between 2016-2019. It would be good if these cohorts kept up or even exceeded the growth in the broader population, as they did between 1999-2009. The truth is we don't know exactly why this has turned.”
”It could be as simple as we're dealing with a smaller generation between 15-34, which are the kids of Gen Xers (who are currently 41 to 55ish) who themselves were a smaller generation. If that is true, then we're really swimming uphill again a demographic wave.”
”It could be from out migration, particularly the -9,000, 25-34 year olds who netted out between 2016 and 2019. We don't know for sure though, and won't ever really know since we can't track them down, and even the Federal Census only captures why people moved "to" an area, rather than away from an area. And of course, if we don't know who left and why, we also don't know if they were highly educated, if they got better paying jobs, or what.”
Until 2015 Calgary benefitted from a significant of people moved to Calgary from other provinces. Since then, interprovincial migration has swung to a loss, and international migration has taken over, as you mentioned in your blog. The -9,000 for 25 to 34-year olds in 2016-2019, was +27,000 from 2011 to 2014. Provincewide, all ages, interprovincial migration for those two periods went from +110,000 (2011-2014) to -36,000 (2016-2019).
”As you pointed out, the favourite narrative today is that the well paying jobs dried up, layoffs came, and people left, but we'd need comprehensive survey data to confirm that with certainty.”
Harry Hiller (urban sociologist University of Calgary) wrote:
“The data on graduates does not consider whether the graduate was originally from Alberta or had come here to study. I don’t know about Mt. Royal but at U of C students often come from other provincesand then leave after graduation. This is especially true in the professional schools. There is kind of assumption in this debate that the leavers are all local students who are running away.
This is even a bigger issue when looking at out-migrants in general- and especially young adults under 35 who are the largest group of interprovincial migrants. In my work, I found that many people who came interprovincially to Alberta as the promised land of work often left after a time period of trying it out. For some of these younger adults, coming here was for an interesting experience or to see if they could launch their career here. Some of them stayed but others left to return to a home base. This is a huge factor among young adults - and it becomes even more compelling when a recession hits. So it is not surprising when that there is a net interprov loss after periods of big interprov gains.
The key idea is that young adults are the most mobile population in the whole country and we should expect them to be the big movers.”
“Now if 50 year olds started pulling up stakes, that would be a huge danger sign.”
Influx Of Immigrants
While the media focuses on those leaving the city, they don’t talk about the large influx of people moving to Calgary internationally. In fact, the most recent numbers indicate Calgary’s population grew by a healthy 1.9% - higher than Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal.
Source: CanadaVisa.org
And of the 29,254 more people now living in Calgary, 15,797 were international immigrants who chose Calgary as the place to start their new life. Surely these individuals and families will offset the loss of few thousand young graduates.
In fact, 2,000+ have a Bachelor’s degree or higher and 32% were between 15 and 29 years of age.
They will bring new ideas, energy, skills, experiences and perspectives that will enhance Calgary’s collective brain power, while enriching and diversifying our culture at the same time.
Research by Statistics Canada shows that companies owned by immigrant entrepreneurs create more jobs and have higher growth rates than companies owners born in Canada. Immigrant-owned businesses accounted for 25% of all net new jobs created in the private sector, yet are only 17% of all businesses.
While the data is from 2010, I see no reason to doubt the same is true today as new immigrants remain very motivated by the opportunities Canada and Calgary present to them.
Unlike Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Calgary has not seen a flight to smaller nearby cities as a result of COVID and other factors like housing costs. (graph credit: Calgary Economic Development)
Calgary’s migration rate is higher than Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal. (graph credit: Calgary Economic Development)
Last Word
While there is reason for concern about Calgary’s current economy and the fact it is less attractive to young professionals, but it requires a more detailed analysis before we should be panicking over a huge “brain drain.” Calgary’s politicians and media have become paranoid about the City’s future, focusing on any negative thing they can find. To what purpose, I don’t know.
Understanding a city’s economic reality involves being able to measure and monitor numerous variables over a long period of time. Taking one or two variables, over a one or two-year period can lead to being too pessimistic or too optimistic. We need to look a bigger, longer picture.
Though Calgary’s future definitely isn’t as rosy as it was 10 years ago, it is not as gloomy as the media portrays it today.
If you like this blog you will like these links:
CBC: Let’s face reality about Calgary’s potential as a tech hub
Calgary: Millennials, In Condos, Drinking Wine
Calgary Ideal Place For Entrepreneurs post COVID