Justin Sabo works with six other well-educated people in their mid-30s or younger at the company he co-founded three years ago, Digital Dream Labs on the North Side. It’s a workplace group that would have been hard to find not so long ago.
Many, like Mr. Sabo, have connections to Carnegie Mellon University, where he obtained a master’s degree attending its Entertainment Technology Center. None of them is from the Pittsburgh region originally. His two co-founders of the educational gaming company are from California and Delaware, and Mr. Sabo, 32, is from the Philadelphia suburbs in Bucks County.
They’re the kind of creative young people Pittsburgh is increasingly able to not just attract but retain — a valuable turnaround for a Rust Belt region long known for its graying population and aversion to change. New census data released today help highlight Pittsburgh’s and Allegheny County’s growth in the age 25-to-34 population, a key demographic for the city’s vitality that shrunk along with the jobs in the late 20th century manufacturing collapse.
Now, such post-college young adults increasingly enjoy Pittsburgh’s amenities and affordability, to go with jobs matching their technology-related training.
“I like the arts vibe, the cultural type of things going on, the sense of how close everything is,” said Mr. Sabo, who is single and lives on the South Side. “And the cost of living is much cheaper, especially for people at a startup with very little funding.”
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While the city’s and county’s population have remained stagnant in recent years, more and more of their residents are 25 to 34, even though it’s not an age group that’s growing nationally or in the rest of the metropolitan region.
The new U.S. Census Bureau data, which combine five years of estimates to increase statistical reliability, show people ages 25-29 made up 7.6 percent of Allegheny County’s population in 2010-14, compared to 7.0 percent in 2005-09. Those in the 30-34 range made up 6.5 percent, compared to 6.0 percent five years earlier.
Within Pittsburgh’s city limits, the percentages and increases are even higher, from people in that age group gravitating toward urban amenities and the many institutions of higher education. Those institutions are also spurring increase in the number of local residents age 20-24.
What’s new about the county’s demographics is that it now has a higher proportion of people in their late 20s and early 30s than is the case nationally, which was not true in either 2005-09 or in recent decennial head counts. Demographic researchers say the stagnant population figures here overall indicate the group’s growth is not from people aging from within — it’s the likes of Mr. Sabo and his cohorts migrating from elsewhere.
“We have companies like Google and Uber and now Apple setting up shop here, and the target age group for their employees are those right out of graduate school or with five or 10 years of experience,” noted Dave Mawhinney, director of CMU’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Recent studies by researchers at Cleveland State University’s Center for Population Dynamics have shown Pittsburgh producing employment in its education and research sectors far beyond what is typical for its size, and the educational level of its 25-to-34-year-olds in the workforce is much higher than that of most large cities.
“There’s this knowledge production complex that has exploded in Pittsburgh. ... You could argue that Pittsburgh is the fastest-rising metro in the country in its population of college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds,” said Jim Russell, a geographer who worked on the studies, which held Pittsburgh up as an attractive model for Cleveland to emulate.
Such transplants are helping fill the new apartments of East Liberty, restaurants of Lawrenceville, cultural venues Downtown and sports arenas of the region, while contributing to the same vibe that has won Pittsburgh out-of-town media adulation and kept young people here once they arrive.
Stephanie Zanin, an account planning manager for the Marc USA advertising firm who is a late millennial herself at 31, said it is an age group that savors experiences more than tangible goods. They’re thus nourished by Pittsburgh’s mix of big-city cultural-recreational amenities and smaller neighborhood charms.
A Richland resident originally from Westmoreland County, Ms. Zanin said all three of her younger siblings in their 20s are still in the region. The same is true of Mr. Mawhinney’s three sons in their 20s. They both doubt that would have been the case a decade or two ago.
“I think it’s a very different place now for people my age,” Ms. Zanin said.
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First Published: December 3, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
Updated: December 3, 2015, 5:15 a.m.
