Expert says Idaho must change for new suburban residents – Immigrant population growth to accelerate

Brad Edmondson, editor-in-chief for American Demographics Magazine, was in Sun Valley this week for the 30th annual conference of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry in
Sun Valley, ID

By SUSAN BAILEY

The Wood River Journal ~ Sun Valley

http://woodriverjournal.com/articles/2004/06/23/front/top.txt

More than any other part of the state, Blaine County has become home to a certain type of suburban resident, an expert noted on Monday.

"If you want to see suburban Baby Boomers, all you have to do is drive from here to Hailey," said demographer Brad Edmondson during a keynote address at the 30th annual conference of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry in Sun Valley.

Edmondson owns ePodunk Inc., a Web site http://epodunk.com/ providing detailed demographic profiles of 26,000 places in the United States. The Web site often provides information for people looking to change their life by moving, he said.

Many of them are coming to Idaho.

More than 50 business leaders from around the state including representatives from Monsanto, Blue Cross of Idaho, Hewlett-Packard, Idaho Power, Qwest Communications and J.R. Simplot Co. heard Edmondson speak on Monday, June 21, in the Sun Valley Inn during the three-day conference.

His talk, "Labor Force Trends in Idaho and the U.S. to 2015" extrapolated from obvious trends and drew conclusions from statistics on a state and national level.

Noting a suburban migration into the mountains and increasing immigrant populations from Mexico and South America as the trends driving the labor force in Idaho for the next 10 years, Edmondson traced the impacts of these changes on the work force.

Edmondson is a nationally recognized expert on the impact of social change in the United States and its impact on businesses and other institutions. He was editor-in-chief for American Demographics magazine, a writer for Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Post and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.

A graduate of Cornell University, he lives in Ithaca, N.Y.

He said changes seen in Blaine County, where the number of residents between ages 50-59 years doubled in the past few years, is typical of mountain towns in the West. New residents can live wherever they want and are acting upon certain priorities.

"The population moving into these areas is talented enough that work finds them wherever they go," said Edmondson. "Some of these people keeping working in their field through the Internet and others take employment as available but they come for the mountains, the outdoor recreation and to spend more time with their families."

Edmondson said the new suburban resident in Idaho wants four things: access to good health care, access to good schools, access to good airline service and access to high-speed Internet connections.

None of this is news in Blaine County where the past few years have seen all of these changes instituted to some degree. But Edmondson noted rural Idaho towns that are seeing their first new residents have to make a few changes to keep up with these demands.

Unlike an agricultural population, new residents moving mainly from Southern California, Oregon and Washington are used to gourmet food stores and broadband and want to have them in Idaho.

Noting that the statistics are probably true throughout the state, Edmondson said Boise has gathered two-thirds of its new residents from Southern California, Washington and Oregon.

His research shows 14 percent of the population in the state capitol arrived from Southern California, 10 percent from Puget Sound, 10 percent from Eastern Oregon and Washington, 9 percent from Salt Lake City, 8 percent from Portland/Vancouver and 8 percent from San Francisco.

Edmondson said companies who want to attract skilled workers to match new employees migrating from outside the state have only to take advantage of "chain migration."

"Chain migration is a very simple and very effective way of getting new employees," he said. "All you do is find workers in your company who moved from places like Sacramento, San Diego, and Portland and invite them to bring friends."

The employment scene will remain good in Idaho into 2010, Edmondson said.

The hot jobs for Idaho in the next 10 years, where total employment is expected to grow 26 percent, are in banking and investments, instruments, electronic equipment, insurance, agriculture, and social services.

Edmondson said 158,000 new jobs will become available between now and 2010.

Employment in industries such as mining and forestry will plummet. Statistics indicate a 63 percent drop in mining and a 38 percent decline in the timber industry.

Drawing the most workers will be educational services, followed by self-employment, eating and drinking establishments, and health services.

"The self-employed, already a strong part of the Idaho economy, will get stronger," said Edmondson. "We’re talking about very highly skilled people with high incomes."

These skilled people will be driving a large sector of the economy, he said.

Also driving the economy will be increasing numbers of Mexican and South American immigrants who typically wait to have children to ensure the children will be U.S. citizens. In future, more than 1 out of 10 preschoolers in Idaho will be Latino.

More than 600,000 legal immigrants a year have entered the country in recent years, with 1.5 million arriving in 1990. Nearly half of the immigrant population in the U.S. comes from Mexico and South America, according to Edmondson.

Burley has the highest Latino population in the state, he said.

Gooding and Jerome counties have populations that are 17 percent Latino, compared to the highest amount of 26 percent in Minidoka County. As a whole, Idaho only has eight percent Latino residents, but that is expected to change fast.

"You may not be seeing it now, but it is coming your way," said Edmondson. "It’s going to pick up speed."

With women born in the U.S. having too few children to keep the population growing, it is the immigrants who are filling schools and providing young workers for the labor force. Edmondson doesn’t see that changing any time soon.

"In 20 years, the world is still going to line up for green cards," Edmondson said. "A very different America is emerging."

Immigration, he said, is the only reason the U.S. population has grown in recent years. Edmondson said the past 10 years saw Asians and Latinos settling in big U.S. cities with a more recent push into small cities and rural areas.

"That’s where the impact on Idaho comes," said Edmondson. "Immigrants are spreading out as their population grows."

Whatever their country of origin, immigrants are typically either highly skilled or not skilled at all, Edmondson said.

"People with the most skills and people with the least skills have the most to gain from pulling up roots," said Edmondson. "They tend to be either at the very top or the very bottom. Someone who is a software designer in Bombay is going to make more in Silicon Valley, so they leave home."

In Boise, immigrants are as likely to be unskilled farm workers as software writers. Unlike New York City, the most diverse place in the country, Idaho has little diversity in its population. The state draws immigrants mainly from Mexico and South America, and many do not speak English.

That means the language barrier will probably become an increasing problem for Idaho employers, according to Edmondson.

"There will be a demand to teach good English but there’s a question about who’s going to step up and do that," Edmondson said. "Literacy is a pressing issue at the bottom, especially in Idaho."

Other problems for the future involve heavy demands on natural resources, especially water.

"Your job is preservation," Edmondson told Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry members on Monday. "The game is holding on to what you’ve got. People want to live here, and they are going to keep coming."