Anastasiya Miller moved 1,300 miles away to Tampa, Florida, from her hometown last year.
“I was excited,” Miller said. “I knew I wanted to get out of Oklahoma. I had lived in Colorado for a summer before moving to Tampa.”
Miller grew up in the suburbs of Edmond, Oklahoma and graduated with her bachelor's degree in 2022. She took a job at Kraft Heinz in her home state and then moved to Florida after being promoted to a sales analyst.
If she does return to the middle of the country, Miller expects it will be in Chicago, where her company is based.
“Just for the sake of opportunity,” Miller said. “That's probably where most of my ventures will take me.”
Thousands more college graduates across the Midwest and Great Plains left their states in 2022, according to the latest American Community Survey from the US Census Bureau. Research from the University of Nebraska at Omaha shows that work-centered reasons are the main driver for why people moved.
This migration of people with higher education degrees has been called “brain drain” and the opposite effect, “brain gain”. The brain drain or profit is concentrated in the population with university education or higher.
Josie Schafer, director of the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Center for Public Affairs Research, has been tracking the brain drain using census data since about 2010. He said there are jobs available, but many people are looking for what he calls job density.
“I think people are really looking for those places where it's not just a good job, it's the potential for many good jobs in a lifetime,” Schafer said.
In Nebraska, 4,610 people with bachelor's, bachelor's or professional degrees left the state in 2022. Schafer said while that's part of a trend, it's important to understand that there are still large numbers of people with bachelor's degrees both in Nebraska and in states like Iowa, Missouri and Oklahoma.
For example, they remain above 450,000 In-state Nebraskans who have degrees.
“So in terms of the overall size of people leaving, it's really not that big of a deal,” Schafer said. “It's really just that voltage drop factor that we're really attuned to.”
Other states like Kansas and South Dakota gained people with degrees in 2022. The previous year, Kansas lost more people with degrees than it had earned. Schafer said many states will see brain gain in urban spaces.
While there is a downward trend in many Midwestern states, Schafer said there are economic ties being created through investment and internship programs in Nebraska.
“Entrepreneurship is something I really focus on at Nebraska,” Schafer said. “It's really hard to get big business to move here and create great jobs, but we can certainly grow jobs from within.”
Shaffer said the lack of affordable housing is also an issue that can push people to move out of state.
The Center for Rural Affairs is a nonprofit rural advocacy organization based in Nebraska that focuses on economic opportunity. Gillian Leinster, the center's interim policy director, said there is a lot of interest in rural economic development.
“I know that people in rural Nebraska are invested in their communities, in revitalizing and strengthening them, in welcoming new community members,” Leinster said.
He said areas with growth opportunities include broadband, clean energy and agriculture.
Leinster, who lives and works in a rural area, said such places are full of knowledge and wisdom.
“We have a responsibility as members of the farming community ourselves to actively work to make our communities the places where people will choose to live and work,” he said. “And we need to think carefully about the decisions we make and the kind of community we build based on our personal decisions. But I see a lot of positive growth in our rural Nebraska communities.”
This story was created in collaboration with Harvest Public Media, a partnership of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. He reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
