Oregon Insight: Newcomers from California drive Portland’s growth, while more Portlanders are Seattle-bound

Another year, another influx of California retirees into the Portland area.

That’s a finding from the new migration figures reported by the US Census Bureau earlier this month. They show that the Portland metropolitan area – Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties in Oregon and Clark County in Washington – saw the largest increases over Oregon’s southern neighbor, with an average net increase of 11,247 people from California per year from 2015 to 2019.

Many who leave the subway area are also not far. When Portlanders moved elsewhere, they would likely move to other areas of Oregon and Washington. The Portland area had a net loss of 5,374 residents to other parts of Washington state, with most moving to the Seattle and Longview areas. And the region saw a net loss of 4,753 people to other parts of Oregon – mostly to Bend, Corvallis, and Salem.

According to state economists and population experts, housing prices and the availability of jobs seem to be the main drivers of migration.

Charles Rynerson, coordinator for the Oregon State Data Center, said places like San Francisco and New York have seen declining migration rates, and places that are cheaper to live, like Boise and parts of the Midwest, are “known net winners.”

Portland, he said, is somewhere in the middle, both in terms of the cost of living and the labor market.

“We have a certain tech economy, but not on the scale of San Francisco or Seattle,” he said.

The numbers, which cover a five-year period through 2019, do not yet reflect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic from 2020, and they only begin against a slowdown in Oregon population growth in the latter half of the last decade.

And Oregon population and economists said it was difficult to say exactly what the data means over such a short period of time – especially when most of the people who come and go from the subway area don’t travel very far.

“When you talk about very small regions like this, is the question whether this is a long-term trend or is it being driven by a data error?” Said Josh Lehner, an economist for the state of Oregon.

It’s not surprising to see the steady stream of California residents moving into the area, he said. Historically, between 30 and 40% of people moving to Oregon come from there.

People moving to Oregon from states other than California tend to settle in the Portland area, Lehner said. And those who move within the state usually move to the Willamette Valley and settle in medium-sized towns like Salem, Corvallis, and Eugene.

“This increases the potential of the economy and the workforce and enables local companies to hire and expand more quickly,” said Lehner. “That’s something Oregon is generally great at, and probably the main reason we’re growing faster than other states. We have a large influx of mostly 20 and 30 year olds. Above all, that’s who moves here. “

But migration to Oregon has slowed down over the past decade.

Lehner said economists looked at two factors that may have contributed to the slowdown, although too little data is available to be sure.

One possibility is the low unemployment shortly before the pandemic.

“Sixty to 70 percent of people say they are moving to Oregon for a job,” Lehner said. “But the low unemployment rate means that there were better job opportunities elsewhere – opportunities may have broadened across the country.”

Lehner said another possibility is the impact of the Portland housing market on the people who come or stay in the area.

“We were curious to see if the housing affordability challenges would drive more people out of Portland,” he said. “And we haven’t seen that before – but it makes sense that we’re starting to see that.”

He added that the housing market could potentially deter people from moving to Portland as well.

“We’re not so much forcing local residents to pack up and move away,” he said. “Rather, if a 25-year-old wants to move around the country, we may push people off at that first step and they choose not to come to Oregon.”

Outside the west coast, Portland saw the greatest influx of people from several of the country’s major population centers: New York, Texas and the greater Washington, DC area.

About 1,100 people moved to the Portland area, including the District of Columbia, from Virginia. Almost a thousand New Yorkers moved to Portland, as well as more than 500 Texans.

Lehner said there has been a slight increase in immigration from eastern states over the past decade, but the majority of Oregon’s population increases are still from much closer proximity.

Lehner said it was not yet clear how the pandemic will affect migration in and out of the area.

“We had a slowdown in migration at the beginning of the pandemic when the accommodations were in place,” he said. “It has taken off a little since then.”

But perhaps the greatest challenge of the pandemic will simply be keeping track of those numbers. Lehner said the Census Bureau does not plan to release its migration data for 2020 as the polls are coming back badly during the pandemic.

– Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; [email protected]; @JRamakrishnanOR