Portland State Magazine Winter 2013

18 PORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE WINTER 2013 Remember when people were content to be unambi- tious, sleep until eleven, just hang out with their friends, had no occupations whatsoever? I thought that died out a long time ago. Not in Portland. Portland is a city where young people go to retire. - “Dream of the 90s,” Portlandia sketch Portlandia, the wildly popular and Peabody Award-winning IFC network television show, has burned a certain image of Portland into pop culture: a city filled with transplanted hipsters who can’t decide between making jewelry or applying to grad school; who have made the annual Allergy Pride Parade a well-attended event; who proudly serve food retrieved from dumpsters. Gainful employment? It just gets in the way of a lifestyle that is Portland. This begs the question: Could fiction be fact and Portland really be the city where young people go to retire, as the show claims? Yes and no, say Jason Jurjevich and Greg Schrock, PSU Urban Studies and Planning faculty, who were inspired to look past the stereotypes for solid data. They examined the migration patterns of college-educated young people (a group they affectionately call YCEs) in 50 metropolitan areas from 1980 to 2010. In that timeframe, Portland consistently attracted and maintained an extremely high rate of YCEs. “This holds true regardless of economic conditions,” says Jurjevich. “Some metro areas only attract YCEs during good economic times. We have a ‘brain gain’ occurring in Portland even in economic downturns.” At first glance, the two professors’ research appears to sup- port the Portlandia stereotype: Portland YCEs scored high for self-, part-time, and no employment at all compared to other metro areas. In addition, wages in Portland for YCEs were among the lowest. “However, that high rate of part-time employment is not semi-retirement,” says Schrock. “That is a coping strategy.” Jurjevich and Schrock conclude that young professionals don’t come to Portland to retire, but they don’t come expect- ing to get rich, either. They are committed to Portland In the hit television show, the young, hip, and unambitious find a home in Portland. Two PSU professors pit fiction against fact. IS PORTLAND REALLY PORTLANDIA? WR I T T E N B Y MEG DE S CAMP