Cities Suffer Hipster Surplus

Portland might have an unemployment rate much higher than the national average (11.8 percent) and be covered in clouds most days of the year, but that’s not stopping young, college-educated people from moving there. Though the recession is upending migration patterns across the country, certain “youth magnet” cities, like Austin, Seattle, and Portland, are still attracting large numbers of highly-educated workers who end up glutting the oversaturated employment ranks, taking jobs they are overqualified for or burning through savings while unemployed. But the city’s not chasing the hipsters away—the education level of a city’s workforce is one of the most important factors to its economic success. When the economy bounces back, the hipster havens hope to be at the front of the pack.