Why Young People With Options Go Elsewhere (and what we can do to stop it)

Ah, my "hometown." Fort Wayne, IN.

I have lived there four (4) separate times in my life. The first time, I moved there in 1985. The last time, I moved there in 2013. I was happy to leave all four times I left.

Today, I read this in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about a branding effort to get young people to move to northeast Indiana. Here is the new logo they came up with.

From the article:

Business leaders are hoping a new branding effort will help lure people to live and work in northeast Indiana.

The Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership today unveiled "Make It Your Own," a marketing effort designed to attract people ages 21 to 45 to the 11-county region. The partnership, which is made up of business and civic leaders, worked with national and local marketing agencies to produce the tagline and a "brand strategy," according to a news release.

"Northeast Indiana's number one business need is increasing our talent pool," Michael Galbraith, director of the partnership's Road to One Million initiative, said in a statement. "On average, we have more than 6,000 unfilled jobs in the region in our jobs portal. For our region to thrive in today's global economy, we must grow our population to one million people by 2030."

Don't get me going on this "unfilled jobs" red herring. I've discussed this ad nauseum and my thoughts on it are well known.

As much as I appreciate the optimism of those who are trying to help the area, the fact of the matter is that people don't go there because opportunity is hoarded. It's not because Ft. Wayne lacks a "brand strategy," it's because Ft. Wayne lacks "opportunity."

I moved to Ft. Wayne after college and couldn't get a job that required a college degree. Is it any mystery why I left? I moved there after law school and left as soon as a law firm (as opposed to the company I was working for as an "in-house" lawyer . . . who performed precisely zero legal work) offered me a job in Indianapolis. Any mystery why I left?

That company I worked for had me purchasing right-of-way for utility lines. Boring, but decent work. I met a lot of "successful" people in the area and, to a disconcerting degree, most of the "successful" people I met were "successful" because they "won the sperm lottery" and were born into "successful" families. It had very little to do with these peoples' intelligence, motivation, innovation, or other such quality. Rather, it had everything to do with "my family started farming here in 1870" or "my grandfather started this warehouse company back in the '40s" or "my dad locked down the auto dealership market in this town in the 1950s." Pretty much everyone else in Ft. Wayne who is "successful" was raised, educated, and first hired and nurtured elsewhere. It was only after achieving professional success that they were "bribed" to move to Ft. Wayne and work for the large incumbent companies.

Maybe there was opportunity there in 1950 or 1920, but there sure ain't much opportunity there in 2019.

I write about this for two reasons. First, this is, to a large degree, my "hometown." I graduated from high school in Ft. Wayne. Second, and much more important, however, is that I want to see Speedway be a place where opportunity is planted and nourished, as opposed to hoarded by the incumbents. Is Speedway going to be a dynamic place, or is it simply going to be the place where the underwhelming offspring of the natives simply stay because they have no other opportunities? I'd prefer the former, but I fear the latter and can't help but notice how difficult it is for Indianapolis natives to break in with the large incumbent employers. Until and unless that changes, there will be a constant brain drain as the natives who can go where the opportunity is, and the large incumbent businesses are left trying to bribe mid-career professionals to return, just like in Ft. Wayne.