Below is the question I was going to ask the Mayor, in full. The question was messed up by the phones:
The other day I was fortunate to be present and hear a presentation made by Taylor Dellinger of the Council of Governments and I also received a Newsletter that has his studies in it.
The stats in that Newsletter show that this decade, the 18 to 44 year old population in our metro grew by just 45 people, while the population older than that grew by 18,589. The population of 0 to 4 year olds has actually fallen by nearly 8%. To me, that shows that people of child bearing age have left the area.
Statistics show that this area has the worst personal income level of any area in the state and wage growth is in the bottom 5% in the nation.
People talk about our educational attainment levels being so low, but those stats only factor people 25 and older that have a four year degree, not anything about drop outs. I don’t condone dropping out, but it doesn’t factor into the equation.
We get stuck in this notion about Education, Education, Education. Test scores amongst high schoolers are actually pretty good in this area. As a person with two college degrees that is having a really hard time finding a job around here to match his skill set, I can tell you that without jobs, no level of education matters and that is the reason why we can’t retain our best and brightest and attract other young college educated people to the area. Because of Job Quality.
Mr. Mayor what are we going to do to attract industries to this area that will encourage the younger generations to take part in this community?
Here is the Audio Link of My Conversation with the Mayor on Hal Row's show
