Hello and Goodbye! How Can Iowa Stop the Outflow of People?

 

Iowa has a strange habit.

We spend eighteen years raising kids, building schools, coaching their ball teams, and telling them to study hard and make something of themselves. Then we send them off to a state or local college.

Four years later, they graduate, pack a U-Haul, and hit the highway—headed for anywhere but here.

Hello, college freshman. Goodbye, college graduate.

We’ve been doing this for years, and it’s catching up with us. Iowa is getting older. We’re running short of workers. Too many young Iowans leave and never come back.

In 2008, 47 percent of Iowa college students planned to stay after graduation. By 2024, it was down to 41 percent. Do that year after year, and the numbers add up.

Jobs are part of the problem. A software engineer will find more opportunities in Minneapolis than Fort Dodge. Someone interested in filmmaking or advertising has a bigger playing field in Chicago or Denver than Ottumwa.

But jobs are only one piece of the puzzle. Young people want more than a job. They want a life and people their age to share it with.

It’s like choosing between two restaurants. One is packed. The other has three cars out front, and one belongs to the cook.

Which one are you going to try?

Towns work the same way. People go where things are happening.

One 25-year-old leaves because there’s nobody his age around. Six months later, his buddy leaves. Now they’re both telling friends back home how great Minneapolis is. Pretty soon, Minneapolis has three more young workers, and Iowa has three empty barstools.

Look around Des Moines and you can see the other side of it. Waukee had around 5,000 people in 2000. Twenty years later, it had roughly 25,000.

Houses went up. Schools were built. Restaurants opened. More people came, so more houses went up and more businesses opened.

Waukee looked like it expected people to show up.

So they did.

You don’t have to look at Des Moines to see this happening. Look at Tiffin.

In 2020, Tiffin had about 4,500 people. Five years later, it had over 7,100. That’s 58 percent growth.

Tiffin had one major advantage. It sits between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, close to jobs in both cities. But instead of sitting around waiting for people to discover it, Tiffin built.

Houses went up. Businesses followed. New developments brought plans for restaurants, shopping, and entertainment.

Tiffin looked like it expected people to come. So they came.

But not every Iowa city is growing like Tiffin. Some are spending money, offering incentives, and still losing people.

Clinton is a good example.

Clinton offers tax breaks, development help, and programs to fix old buildings and create downtown housing. Those aren’t bad ideas. They’re just not bringing enough people.

Clinton had nearly 27,000 residents in 2010. Today, it’s closer to 24,000.

The old Iowa plan says create jobs and people will follow.

What if that’s backwards?

Tiffin builds for people. Houses go up, families move in, and businesses follow. Clinton still spends much of its energy chasing projects and companies.

Maybe it should chase people. Offer remote workers $10,000 to move to Clinton. Help young graduates buy a house. Go after Chicago workers tired of high rent and traffic.

Clinton sits on the Mississippi River and has some of the cheapest housing in the state.

Sell that.

Fix the downtown. Keep helping businesses. But give people a reason to move there, because tax breaks for a factory mean little if there aren’t any workers to fill the jobs.

People have eyes.

If nobody has built a house in town since George W. Bush was president, it’s going to take a lot of work to turn things around.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, is worth a look. It isn’t Chicago. There aren’t any mountains or beaches full of palm trees. Winter is still winter. Yet Grand Rapids has done a great job attracting younger adults.

The city has walkable neighborhoods, restaurants, breweries, healthcare jobs, and professional work. A 28-year-old can build a career there and still have somewhere to go after work.

That’s not complicated.

Grand Rapids also pays attention to newcomers. Getting someone to move is one thing. Getting them to stay is harder.

Anyone who’s moved to a small Iowa town knows the problem. It’s like walking into a party where everyone else went to high school together. They know the inside jokes and stories. Half of them are related.

You’re standing next to the potato chips wondering why you came.

Iowans are friendly. That doesn’t mean we’re always easy to get to know. A smile at Hy-Vee is nice. It doesn’t give someone friends.

Newcomers need a way in. Softball teams, volunteer groups, bike clubs, business groups, dinner groups. Anything that gets people in the same room often enough to learn each other’s names. Just spare us another networking luncheon with dry chicken and a stack of business cards.

Sioux Falls is another place Iowa should be watching. The city keeps growing while Iowa towns form committees to discuss why they’re shrinking.

Sioux Falls has jobs. Health care, finance, manufacturing, and business have all helped it grow. South Dakota doesn’t have an individual state income tax, either.

But Sioux Falls does something Iowa doesn’t. It acts like people are coming. They build houses. Businesses expand. New neighborhoods appear.

Too many Iowa towns wait for growth before they build anything. That’s like waiting for customers before you open the store.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, tried something even more direct. It offered remote workers $10,000 to move there.

It sounded like a gimmick. Then people came. Thousands joined the Tulsa Remote program. The city didn’t just hand them a check and send them on their way. It helped them meet people and get connected.

The money got them to Tulsa. What happened after they arrived mattered more.

Newton tried a piece of this with cash incentives for qualifying new-home construction.

Why not go further?

Cedar Rapids could recruit remote workers. Dubuque could go after young professionals in Chicago who are tired of housing costs. Burlington could chase people earning $80,000 a year from a laptop.

Bring your job with you. Buy groceries here. Eat here. Buy a house. Pay taxes. Maybe start a business. We’ll help with the move.

Iowa loves chasing companies. We’ll build an industrial park, offer tax breaks, and hope somebody from California shows up with 300 jobs.

Maybe we should chase 300 people instead.

Not every Iowa town can pull this off. A town of 700 people will not become a technology center, attract 5,000 software developers, or open twelve breweries.

That’s fine.

What’s not fine is handing every town the same plan.

You wouldn’t give cough syrup to a guy with a broken leg. Why do we think every Iowa town needs the same medicine?

Des Moines needs one plan. Cedar Rapids needs another. Dubuque has different strengths than Sioux City. Burlington isn’t Ames, and pretending it is won’t help anybody.

The same goes for small towns.

Maybe one is a good place for retirees. Another has cheap housing that could attract remote workers. A river town might have a future in tourism and recreation. Another town might have a factory worth helping expand.

And some towns are going to keep shrinking. Not every town can be saved with a streetscape project and six new flowerpots. Pretending otherwise saves nothing. It just burns another ten years.

Cedar Rapids should be especially interesting to watch. It has major employers, hospitals, manufacturing, an airport, and Iowa City down the road.

Its population has barely moved in recent years. That’s not a crisis, but Iowa’s second-largest city shouldn’t be happy treading water.

Meanwhile, houses are popping up around Des Moines like mushrooms after a rain.

Why?

That’s the question Iowa should be asking. Not in a 180-page report nobody reads. Get a room full of people who moved to Waukee, Ankeny, or Grimes and ask them why they went there.

Then listen.

We need to do the same thing with college graduates.

Every spring, thousands of young adults stand on Iowa soil, holding fresh diplomas. They’ve been here four years. They know how cold February gets. They’ve driven Interstate 80 in a snowstorm and smelled a hog confinement with the windows down.

Iowa has already made its first sales pitch. Then graduation comes, and we wave goodbye.

Why?

Why not give graduates a reason to stay? Offer a tax credit. Help with a down payment in communities that need young families. Help pay student loans for people working jobs Iowa can’t fill. Pick the people we need and go after them.

Iowa also needs to quit being so shy about selling itself.

Ask someone on the East Coast what they know about Iowa and you’ll probably hear corn and pigs. Maybe Field of Dreams. Meanwhile, someone in Denver is spending $2,500 a month on an apartment and wasting forty-five minutes driving to work.

Go talk to that guy.

Tell him a twelve-minute commute is real, houses still exist for less than half a million dollars, and he can open a business without a millionaire backing him.

But don’t lie.

If downtown is dead at six o’clock, don’t call it vibrant. If there’s no childcare or affordable housing, fix the problem. Don’t hide it behind a Facebook ad.

Young people aren’t leaving because they hate Iowa. They found something better somewhere else.

Don’t blame them. They found something they wanted. They found a better job, more people their age, or a place where something was happening.

Maybe Minneapolis isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After a few years of traffic and high rent, Iowa might look pretty good again.

Give them a reason to come back.

Iowa can turn this around, but not with another slogan or a picture of a cornfield at sunset.

We can help graduates stay. We can go after remote workers. We can build houses where people actually want to live. We can make it easier for newcomers to find friends and become part of a town.

We can quit pretending Burlington needs the same plan as Waukee. We can ask people why they’re leaving and listen without getting mad at the answer.

That’s the “if.”

If we’re willing to admit some of our towns are stuck. If we’re willing to try something new before hiring another consultant to tell us what we already know. If we’re willing to spend money attracting people, not just companies. And if we’re willing to change the things young people keep telling us they don’t like.

The people leaving Iowa aren’t disappearing. They’re moving to Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, and Kansas City. They’re getting jobs, buying houses, starting businesses, and raising families.

They’re doing exactly what we raised them to do. They’re just doing it somewhere else. For years, Iowa has been good at saying hello when young people arrive for college. Four years later, we’re even better at saying goodbye.

We can change that. But first, Iowa needs to decide if it really wants them to stay. Because saying we do is easy.

Giving them a reason is the hard part.

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