For decades, Midwestern cities have struggled to retain residents. As manufacturing jobs left, so did people.
The city of Akron lost one third of its population from 1960 to 2020. In the city of Cleveland, it was 60%. Dayton faced a similar plummet in population – leaving behind shuttered factories and empty storefronts.
But, now there are signs that the trend is starting to reverse. For the first time in a long time, these Ohio cities are seeing more people migrate into their metros than move away.
Jeanne Whalen reported on the end of the Midwest exodus for the Wall Street Journal. Whalen sat down with the Ohio Newsroom to explain what’s behind the reversal of a decades-long trend.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On the population shifts in the Midwest and Ohio
“For the first time in years, the Midwest is gaining slightly more people from the rest of the country than it is losing. In the most recent year of census data that we have, the Midwest gained about 16,000 people more than it lost to the rest of the county. So that's a big turnaround for the Midwest. It's not a huge number – 16,000 isn't an enormous number – but it's a reversal of the losses that had topped 175,000 as recently as 2022.”
“A lot of the Rust Belt or industrial Midwest have kind of struggled to maintain population and to build their economies in recent decades. But we've seen in the last several years that Cleveland and Akron have had some positive population signs. So in both metro areas, flat or shrinking populations have reversed into modest population gains in the past few years.”
On what's bringing people in
“The South, for a long time, was a magnet that was drawing people away from the Midwest. It was offering a lot of jobs and lower taxes and warmer weather, all of those things that made people leave the Midwest. Well, job growth has slowed down in a lot of the South. And so it's no longer this big job magnet that it used to be.”
“And also, some of the housing markets in these big Sunbelt metro areas like Phoenix and Atlanta and Miami have gotten really expensive and housing is relatively affordable still in the Midwest. So, as we've seen housing prices spike in lots of the country, I think housing affordability is another factor causing some Midwesterners to stay put and others perhaps to move to the region.”
On how industry has shifted
“A lot of the jobs in places like Cleveland and Akron these days are in services, in health care, education, and other service industries. And that's true throughout the country as well. We have moved from manufacturing jobs to more service jobs over many decades.”
“There is a little bit of a tech startup scene in Akron these days. It's not major, but the city and the metro area have really done a lot of work to try to turn the Akron area’s knowledge about tires and rubber and polymers into all sorts of new startups. And there is a wing in the former BF Goodrich Tire Factory that is now housing a bunch of tech startups. … It's a whole mix of things, but it's beyond just the tire and rubber manufacturing of the past.”
On ‘boomerangers’ moving back
“Some of these folks have come back to town for cool jobs. Like there was one young man in the article who had moved to Las Vegas to work out there. He and his wife wanted to be near the national parks and take advantage of warmer weather and they were enjoying themselves out there, but then he got a job offer to come work for one of these startups. And it was just kind of the ideal job for him. So he and his wife moved back to the Akron area.”
“There's not always one reason, right? People can have multiple reasons for wanting to move: be near family, maybe affordability, a new job, all sorts of things. Some are settling down and having kids. … People who come back often bring with them new ideas for new companies or projects or they have families, which can contribute to the area's growth.”
