Molly Murray

The News Journal

Retirees think Delaware is a great place to live. Millennials see a different picture.

Hidden behind the state's steady population growth, economists and planners see an alarming trend. People 55 and over are moving into Delaware from more expensive states in waves large enough to make up for the exodus of young people leaving to seek better jobs and more exciting lifestyles.

In 1980, 30 percent of the population was between 18 and 34. Today that figure has dropped to 23 percent – even as the number of those ages 18-to-34 has grown exponentially compared to the overall population. These millennials are the largest such population in the last three decades, surpassed only by the "Baby Boomers."

About 61 percent of people born in Delaware now live somewhere else. A century ago, 40 percent of native-born Delawareans moved out of state. Much of this migration has consistently been young, well-educated people seeking opportunity elsewhere.

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Business and industry were the old model for economic growth. High tech jobs are the stars of today's economy, and wherever there's growth in that genre, millennials come with energy and ambition to expand urban redevelopment.

Manufacturing in Delaware peaked in 1991 when about 46,000 held jobs in that sector, but it has steadily fallen, by 25 percent, in the last decade or so. High-tech and service jobs have grown in the same time period, but the raw number of jobs added is less than half of what was lost in manufacturing.

Economists say millennials seek a place where there is an energized labor market with job depth, a place where they can build friendships, find life partners and build the type of professional networks they will need to shape shift through their careers. Innovative restaurants, arts and entertainment venues make a difference.

[Editor's note: A version of this map optimized for mobile devices is also available.]

Joe Cortright, a founder of CityObservatory.org, a Portland, Oregon, think tank dedicated to data-driven analysis of cities and their growth policies, said "the higher performing kids tend to go farther" away from their home states.

Aaron Gertler, Mt. Pleasant High School class of 2011, took a job with Epic, a Madison, Wisconsin, company that specializes in software for better healthcare management when he graduated from Yale last spring.

“I like Delaware a lot,” he said. “I liked growing up in Delaware” but the reality, he said, is that there is “not much going on in Delaware.”

Delaware officials want to better position Delaware to capture this youthful brain gain.

Gov. Jack Markell said that's why his administration has spent energy and money to attract and keep companies like JP Morgan Chase, Incyte and Sev One. The state also has invested in Wilmington's Riverfront and Market Street areas, which offer modern condos, restaurants and nightlife for the "life" side of the work-life balance many young people seek.

The keys, Markell said, are fast broadband Internet service, downtown development districts (where state funds encourage revitalization of business areas), high-tech jobs and improved schools.

"We want (young) parents who are deciding where they want to be" to look at Delaware, he said.

While Sussex County does not have many high tech jobs that draw millennials, lower Delaware has branded itself with the sort of "cool" retirees are looking for.

There are small towns on or close to the ocean and Delaware Bay where neighbors know neighbors, and there are lots of activities from yoga and Spanish classes to history, writing, music, dancing and cooking. Volunteering opportunities abound.

The 55-and-over set outnumbers millennials in all three Delaware counties, but nowhere more starkly than in Sussex, where 40 percent of the population is over 55 and only 15 percent is between 18 and 34.

The median age in Wilmington is 35.1. In Lewes, it's 61.8.

Farm fields have been transformed into 55-plus communities with cookie-cutter homes, where someone else mows the lawn and shovels snow. Some subdivisions are made up almost entirely of people from other states.

[Editor's note: A version of this map optimized for mobile devices is also available.]

Retired United Methodist ministers John and Bonnie Campbell moved to one of those communities, Heritage Shores in Bridgeville, from their former home near Baltimore.

"We had friends who were living here," Bonnie Campbell said. "We used to come and visit them and said, 'I don't think we'd ever want to live' " in a planned, retirement community.

But with lower housing costs and lower taxes, they made the move to Delaware –– and they're close enough to their children and grandchildren to make visits easy.

"We actually like lower, slower, Delaware," John said. "We know who our neighbors are. Here, people make an effort."

The lure of the big city

Thousands who graduated from Delaware high schools in 2011 went on to college and started their careers elsewhere. And they followed a long line of Delawareans before them seeking opportunity in other states.

They are attracted to cities like Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, San Jose and Baltimore. In Boston, millennials make up almost 35 percent of a highly educated population. Nearly 25 percent of city residents have bachelor degrees and another 20 percent have graduate or professional degrees.

Kim Fabian, Charter School of Wilmington class of 2011, landed there after graduating from Yale.

She majored in psychology but came back to Delaware almost every summer. At the University of Delaware, she met Mary Dozier, the Amy E. duPont chair in child development at the University of Delaware. Fabian said she began working with Dozier on her research of foster care impacts on children.

But she found work in Boston. These days, she combines her interest with foster care and native American tribal issues as a research assistant at the Brazelton Touchpoints Center, which builds sustainable, low-cost, strategies to keep children and families healthy. She lives just outside the city in Somerville, Massachusetts.

She did not forget her Delaware roots, however. Fabian has a map of Delaware on her door that includes lots of photos of Vice President Joe Biden. And last Dec. 7, she organized a Delaware Day Party.

"We had scrapple. We had chicken and we had pumpkin pie," she said. "I made everybody hang nylons from the fireplace" because nylon was invented by DuPont in Delaware. "In the middle of the night, Caesar Rodney visited and left presents."

The shift of young people like Fabian signals enormous challenges for states like Delaware, with its mostly rural, small town and suburban culture. State and local officials have to figure out how to make their small and medium-sized cities attractive when compared to major metropolitan areas across the country.

The challenge is making Wilmington, Dover and Newark competitive in the race for the best and the brightest young adults.

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, in his book "Triumph of the City," suggests that the best economic development policy is to attract and keep smart people and "then get out of their way."

David Marvel, Woodbridge High class of 2011 left the small, western Sussex town where he grew up and headed to the mountains in North Carolina. He studied music at Appalachian State University and is about to complete his master's degree there.

In a few months, he'll head west to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he'll study for a second master's in music theory.

"It's been great here," he said.

But for a professional trumpet player, there are only so many opportunities.

Does he miss Delaware? "It pains me to say it, but not really," he said. "It was not an accident I was nine hours away. I love my family. It's always going to be home."

"I want to teach theory and play the trumpet," he said. "There's not much of a scene for that in Delaware."

It's about options

The equation is pretty simple.

"New Castle County never grows unless there is a solid job market," said Edward C. Ratledge, director of the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research at the University of Delaware.

Jobs are what fuels migration of younger people, he said.

Ratledge was born in Alabama and moved to Sussex County as a child. He didn't graduate from Georgetown High School because his family moved to Newark when he was in 10th grade. But his classmates from Georgetown, he said, invited him to the 50th reunion. Many had settled in Sussex, making lives for themselves. But back then, there were more jobs. There was a DuPont plant in Seaford and other satellite industries.

Today, he said, there are not as many options for younger Delawareans. They go to college, and many never return home to set down roots.

"This is really kind of a defining issue for us. What is Delaware's economy going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now? We've got to create an economy that is more entrepreneurial ... based on talent," said Rep. John Carney, D-Delaware, who is running for governor. "It's about Delaware's economy and where the jobs are going to be."

Every day, Carney said, he sees "scores of young people coming off the train" at Wilmington. They are coming from out-of-state to fill the shortage in computer science jobs needed by the banking industry in Wilmington.

"The key thing is a lot of jobs are here," said Markell. "A lot of young people work in Wilmington, but live in Philadelphia."

And Markell understands young people moving away.

"I did it myself," he said. "I encourage people to do that."

Economist John Stapleford said the encouragement Delaware needs is simple: Jobs.

"Young people move to where the jobs are and where the jobs are a lot of things are happening," he said. In Delaware, "you just don't have the amenities."

Stapleford worries that public schools aren't as competitive as they are just across the state line in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He believes many young adults with children live there and commute to work in Delaware.

That shouldn't be, he said. Wilmington should be an affordable option for people who want to work in Philadelphia, he said.

And the Philadelphia, Wilmington, Camden area is no longer in the top 10 for patents per year. According to a 2013 report by the Brookings Institute, the San Jose area leads the nation with 9,237 patents a year between 2007 and 2011. This area, during the same time frame, produced 2,370 patents a year – the majority in biotechnology.

Cortright, of CityObservatory.org, said the folks most likely to move across state lines are people 24 years old with a bachelor's degree. The number drops by half by their 25th birthday when they buy a house, marry and start a family, all of which reduces the probability of a move.

But at corporations across the country, Cortright said, HR departments are culling data, looking for places with lots of smart, young people, asking: "Is it a place where young people want to be?"

The pull of Delaware

For some, Delaware is that place. But it may take a while to realize it.

Brian Cunningham is Delaware communications director for Sen. Chris Coons. In an earlier life, he worked for the Philadelphia Eagles.

He grew up in St. Elizabeth's Parish, graduated from Salesianum, studied journalism at Temple University and then got a master's in education. His wife, a Delaware native, graduated from Ursuline.

"I grew up seven miles from the University of Delaware," he said. "I wanted to go and see something else. I wanted to go and do something else. I was done with Delaware."

For 10 years, he lived and worked in Philadelphia.

But there is that pull, he said, that "crazy, instant connection when you hear somebody say "Delaware" in a crowded room and the first question, when you meet them is: "Where did you go to high school?"

When the Cunninghams decided to start a family, they moved back to Delaware.

[Editor's note: A version of this map optimized for mobile devices is also available.]

Robert Herrera, co-founder of The Mill worker space in downtown Wilmington, came back for a different reason. Herrera graduated from Caesar Rodney High School in 2003.

"It was wonderful," he said. "A handful of kids went to Harvard and Princeton."

One of his classmates is now an oral surgeon in Los Angeles.

Herrera went to college at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and moved on to New York City as an architect for Perkins Eastman. He married and had a child and then his son became seriously ill. He and his wife went to doctors and specialists in New York but his son wasn't getting better so they brought him to Wilmington for treatment at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.

Herrera said the hospital staff was so kind and caring that while his son was at the hospital, they found a house in Happy Valley and moved back to Delaware. Wilmington was his choice.

"I liked the density and the excitement," he said.

"I moved back here less than a year ago," he said. He is close enough to Dover that his parents visit often and help babysit. Twin daughters are the latest addition to his family.

The Mill worker space filled so quickly they are expanding and he is working several other projects, including a new restaurant he describes as "top secret."

"It's definitely a growing area," he said. "I think there have been horrible times in Wilmington but I think we're coming out of that ... I'm happy that we live here."

Kathleen Harris grew up in Wilmington, graduated from the Charter School of Wilmington and went to the University of Delaware for her undergraduate and graduate degrees and is one of the best and brightest from her class – the class of 2009. She did research on offshore wind energy at the University of Delaware and was hooked.

She's a climate planner in the state office of Energy and Climate and encourages Delawareans to purchase plug-in electrics as alternatives to gasoline-powered cars.

"I'm actually the only person from my group from high school that's still in Delaware," she said. "I'm really, really happy."

Many of her friends landed in New York, Boston and Washington, she said.

If she could live anywhere it would probably be New York or Washington.

But Delaware is fine, she said. "It's so close to everything."

Southern Delaware

The state identified the influx of retirees into Sussex County more than a decade ago when Markell was state treasurer. In a report called Delaware Facing Forward, state officials realized Delaware was becoming a retirement destination and they needed to do more to attract and retain young people.

Many of those who move away, do not go far. Nearly 50,000 native born Delawareans live in Maryland and 47,319 are in Pennsylvania. Florida (29,522), California (12,757) and Texas (just over 11,000) also have large Delawarean populations.



[Editor's note: A version of this map optimized for mobile devices is also available.]

Washington, D.C., is another popular landing spot for Delawareans.

Molly Cain, Seaford High School class of 2011, went to Stanford and graduated with a degree in economics in 2015.

"A lot of people are struggling" in Seaford, she said. "I would really like to help."

Her classmate, Ethan Lee, went in a different direction.

Cain moved to Washington, D.C., where she works for the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit, public policy and research organization. She said she's hoping to build her public policy skills and bring them back to Delaware to make a difference in Seaford.

Lee left Seaford, attended Cedarville Union College in Ohio and studied finance.

He got married and moved to Santa Monica, California, in July 2015, following his wife to her new job.

"I wanted to be near the ocean," he said. But "slower lower," as he calls downstate Delaware, wasn't really an option.

"There wasn't a whole lot as far as job opportunity," he said.

In California, he started out as a financial planner and has recently shifted to real estate. He came back to Seaford and visited friends and family at Thanksgiving.

Lee said his parents are both teachers and his high school friends who came back to Sussex County after college, are teachers, too.

For many smaller communities there are major challenges in attracting bright, young residents, Cortright said. The job gains will likely come from healthcare and higher education, he said. And among those small towns that do the best are places that have "a great natural amenity or a niche," he said. The problem comes, he said, when you have highly educated "power couples." While there may be a great job for one, the "trailing spouse" may have more trouble finding work.

That's the story of Dorian and Lori Corrigan. The New Jersey natives met in Ocean City, N.J. They married and moved to Washington state, where Dorian had a job with Comcast.

They were miserable. It rained a lot and Dorian said he found himself watching the webcam from the Bethany Beach boardwalk.

So when Comcast had an opening in Delaware, he applied and he and Lori moved to Millsboro.

"It was always sunny," he said.

"The beach brought us back," he said.

The coast is what brings many of the 55-and-over set to Sussex.

Jean Bell moved to North Bethany from Arnold, Maryland and Anne West, from Washington, D.C. They take frequent power walks on the Bethany Beach boardwalk.

They, like the Campbells in Bridgeville, see Delaware as a terrific place to be retired. They had vacationed in the Bethany area for years before taking the plunge.

"More and more people have retired here," Bell said.

"It's sort of low key," West said. "It's not hard to make friends."

Reach Molly Murray at (302) 463-3334 or mmurray@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @MollyMurraytnj.



