STAFFORD — Virginia is facing a big problem when it comes to college graduates.
There are more college graduates leaving Virginia for other U.S. states than moving into Virginia from other U.S. states. The most common reason that college graduates are moving out of state is to pursue a job opportunity.
Washington, D.C. tops the list of metro areas where college grads are moving to, followed by San Francisco, San Jose, Calif., Denver, and Austin, Tex., according to a new report from Inc. Magazine.
In the past five years, Virginia has plummeted to 36 out of the 50 states in total employment, 42 in gross state product, and 46 in total median income.
These facts were presented by Stephen Moret who is part of the Virginia Economic Partnership and was the keynote speaker at the annual 2018 Stafford County Economic Development office awards dinner at Potomac Point Winery.
“The best thing we can do to position Virginia to retain more college graduates, as well as to attract college graduates from other states, is to increase employment growth in Virginia,” said Moret. “We recently developed a comprehensive plan to do just that, but the implementation of that plan is largely dependent upon new state investments in economic development activities.”
Virginia was generally experiencing a positive net migration of college students until 2013. Afterward, the state has experienced a steep decline of 2,000 to 7,000 graduates each year that are leaving.
“They [college graduates] will be going to large metro areas and relatively rapidly growing states,” said Moret.
According to Moret, the total net migration, including international migration is still positive but interstate migration has gone from positive to negative.
Virginia is starting to become a harder place to start a business now due to the decrease in net migration.
“Virginia is a great place to start a business but because our growth has been constrained relative to what it used to be folks are seeing more economic opportunity in other places,” said Moret.
Although many might think that Northern Virginia’s economy is shielded from all the negative net migration that’s not necessarily the case.
“As sequestration has occurred and growth has slowed down there have been periods of out-migration from Northern Virginia as well,” said Moret.
One way to stop the problem of the decrease in net migration is to put Virginia into a position for more growth.
“Virginia needs to take a more assertive approach to economic development,” said Moret. “Most other states have been far more aggressive than Virginia,” said Moret. “Virginia has had the advantage of having the federal government right at our back door driving roughly 30 percent of our economy.”
