American Population Not Really Shifting To Cities?

This is counter-narrative: More millennials are moving out of cities than into them. That's true for a large assortment of demographic slices in America:

Indeed, for all the talk of the rebirth of American cities, the draw of the suburbs remains powerful. Across all ages, races, incomes and education groups, more Americans are still moving out of cities than in. (Urban populations are still growing, but because of births and immigration, not internal migration.)

So why does the press paint a misleading picture? Educated people are shifting more toward cities (partially contradicting the first article I think). My guess is the educated are driving up housing costs while, at the same time, jobs for less educated are getting automated out of existence. So the poor are moving out to cheaper places to live. This is probably much more the case for the most educated than the least educated cities. The cities with high concentrations of brain power, especially workers with STEM skills, have industries that pay better and their employees can outbid the lower classes for housing (think San Francisco).

Leonid Bershidsky argues that a leisure deficit is killing suburbia as people move closer to their jobs to save time. He says the most skilled people are working longer hours and therefore have less time to commute. So they live closer to work. If the rise in incomes for the highest performers is disproportionate to the number of hours worked then the lower classes are getting pushed out of cities by the rising value of elite cognitive workers.

Well, lets jump ahead 10-15 years and assume fully autonomous vehicles are widely available and working well. What will that do to willingness to commute longer distances? Will knowledge workers let the car do the driving and work on their software, spreadsheets, presentations, and sales calls while they commute to outer suburbs? Or will they still live as close to work as possible, at least on week nights, and only go to second homes further away on weekends?

Also, will video conferencing and virtual reality ever reduce how often people work from the office? So far it is amazing how much people stay anchored to physical offices. Is that ever going to change?

Another question: will automation reduce the size of the optimal city? Suppose cities no longer need humans to work as tax drivers, bus drivers, trash collectors, cooks, and assorted other blue collar workers. Will the knowledge workers in each industry organize themselves around smaller cities surrounded by rings of suburbs?