Sociologist Richard Florida is subbing at Andrew Sullivan's blog, and today he puts another brick in his monument to cool, creative, and gay-friendly cities like Boston. (Remember that these are relative terms.) In his post "Where College Grads Are Heading," he crows a little bit at the apparent reversals of fortune in newer Sun Belt cities like Phoenix. (I already kicked the Arizona city here.)
Florida writes that larger, more diverse, and established cities like Boston and New York will do better at attracting college grads in a bad economy because they're "thick," and he's not talking about accents:
The appeal of big cities stems from a simple economic fact -- they
offer thicker labor markets with more robust job opportunities across a
wide number of fields.
Getting ahead in your career today means more than picking the right
first job. Corporate commitment has dwindled, job tenure has grown far
shorter, and people switch jobs with much greater frequency. The
average American changes their job once every three years; the average
American under the age of 30 changes their job once a year.
In today's highly mobile and economically tumultuous times, career
success also turns on picking a thick labor market which
offers diverse and abundant job opportunities. For new grads, picking
the most vibrant location is an important hedge against economic
uncertainty and the risk of layoff.
All of this is speculative; we don't yet have much data on migratory patterns since last fall's economic crash. We'll see if "thickness" is still a draw if, say, the banking industry recovers and the city of Charlotte suddenly has tens of thousands of jobs to offer graduates.
I wrote about Florida's theories in CommonWealth in 2005; see the article here.