In a region considered a worthy candidate to host Amazon’s second headquarters — attracting considerable national buzz for its affordability, attractiveness and other amenities — people are often surprised when they hear that the population keeps dropping.
But the shouldn’t be. It’s been that way for years in the Pittsburgh region and could be for years more, with the loss of its melting-pot status from a century ago as one key factor.
Pittsburgh, its suburbs and outlying counties are plagued by a three-headed demographic monster responsible for the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the seven-county metropolitan area shrank by 8,169 residents from 2016 to 2017, a bigger drop than anywhere but Chicago. The seven-county metro area’s total estimated loss of 22,924 since the official census head count of 2010 is also second in the nation behind Youngstown, Ohio.
Three reasons for the population slide:
• With an unusual age structure created by severe job losses that caused a late 20th century exodus, the region stands as the largest urban area in the country in which more people die than are born each year. Gradually, more metros are shifting in that direction.
• People tend to move where jobs are, and southwestern Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate has stood above the national average for several years. There’s potential for that to change, as during the Great Recession when the region saw its first population growth in decades, tied to a relatively solid economy.
• Although the one guaranteed boost to the local population each year is from international immigration, the number of such immigrants remains small compared to metro areas of similar size. Rather than a melting pot, think of the smallest saucepan you have available.
The latter is one area where the region is increasingly different from the rest of the country. Many large cities have used international immigration to compensate for other slowdowns in growth, whether from aging of the population and fewer births, or from people moving to other parts of the country.
“We are an anomaly,” said Chris Briem, a University of Pittsburgh regional economist and analyst of population trends. “U.S. population growth is not very rapid as a whole, and most of it is from international immigration.”
Brookings Institution demographer William H. Frey wrote of the latter trend last year in forecasting the negative impact on cities of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce immigration. He said that foreign-born arrivals “will become an especially important contributor to population growth in parts of the country that are aging rapidly and sustaining long-term domestic migration declines.”
No one expects the Pittsburgh region to compete for immigrants with any metropolis lying near the nation’s borders and historically a draw for foreigners, such as Miami, Houston or Los Angeles. But Pittsburgh is lacking even by standards of other mid-sized metro areas, including those far from coastlines or borders.
Net international migration as % of total population METRO AREA | TOTAL POPULATION
Of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas with between 1.6 million and 3 million residents — with Pittsburgh squarely in the middle at just over 2.3 million — only Cincinnati and Kansas City drew fewer international immigrants than the local region’s 27,300 from 2010 to 2017, according to census estimates. Among smaller regions gaining immigrants in greater numbers were Columbus (45,744), Providence, R.I. (41,325), Nashville (33,169), Cleveland (31,263) and Indianapolis (30,329).
In fact, Pittsburgh is generally at or near the bottom of any list of international flavor when all 100 of the nation’s largest metros are taken into account. Its foreign-born population of about 4 percent compares with 13 percent for the U.S. overall. About 2 percent of its population is Hispanic, compared to 17 percent for the U.S. The region’s Asian population is slightly bigger than its number of Hispanics, which is unusual, but still less than half the U.S. percentage.
Though there’s a healthy rate of growth of the local population with international backgrounds — Census Bureau estimates suggest that Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties have at least 7,000 more Hispanics and 10,000 more Asians than in 2010 — the volume of growth is hindered by the low population here to start out.
“When new immigrants come in, they’re going to feel much better if there’s a community there they can attach to, and one that will help them assimilate much better,” Mr. Frey said. “Family and social ties are important. If you’re the first person in your family from a particular background moving into a community, and you can’t talk to the local driver’s license registration guy, that’s difficult.”
Aware of the low numbers compared to other urban areas, both Allegheny County and the city of Pittsburgh have launched initiatives in recent years aimed at welcoming immigrants and assisting them once here. Leaders of local immigrant and advocacy groups say it has led to improvements such as better language help in medical centers and schools and better understanding of them from law enforcement agencies.
Such efforts, which also include government and private agencies’ assistance with community organizing and literacy efforts, are helpful but don’t necessarily translate into higher numbers arriving. Those numbers keep going up steadily, based on the annual net gain from international immigration of about 4,000 residents in the region, but they are rising in every city. Nothing yet suggests that Pittsburgh is increasing its share. Local officials who interact with immigrants believe the Census Bureau estimates undercount that population, but more reliable numbers won’t be available until the 2020 census head count.
“I do think we’re struggling in attracting more of the middle class of Latinos, for whatever reason. ... I don’t really think there is a buzz” among Hispanics about Pittsburgh, said Rosamaria Cristello, executive director of the Downtown-based Latino Community Center and co-chair of the county’s Immigrants and Internationals Advisory Council.
When her friends and relatives visit Pittsburgh from other parts of the country, she said, they are stunned by the relative lack of people who look like them and the scarcity of businesses that seem mindful of them, such as having bilingual staff. The Beechview and Brookline neighborhoods in the city have become more of an anchor for Hispanics — which includes growing numbers from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and now Puerto Rico — but one that pales in size compared to those of most cities, Ms. Cristello observed.
One immigration group that has been an exception to general Pittsburgh trends is the Bhutanese refugee community from central Asia. Its members began arriving here in small numbers a decade ago as one of many U.S. sites for resettlement of thousands of people who had been living in refugee camps in Nepal.
As a well-organized community that supported one another while centering themselves in the South Hills — including city neighborhoods such as Carrick and suburbs like Brentwood and Baldwin Borough — the Bhutanese have thrived to the extent that that they attracted a wave of secondary migration of countrymen. Those who were first placed in other parts of the U.S. in refugee resettlement programs heard of Pittsburgh’s attractions — especially its affordable housing — and leaders of the community believe their population in Allegheny County now numbers more than 5,000, although census estimates are much lower.
Durga Upreti, 30, said friends encouraged him to move to the Pittsburgh area in 2009, a year after the international refugee program first placed him in Idaho. He and others at the time were aided by the relatively good job market here — he became a supervisor for Giant Eagle — and Mr. Upreti now owns and operates the DMK Furniture Outlet on Saw Mill Run Boulevard in Brentwood, where he says half his customers are Bhutanese.
“As long as people are willing to do something, I’m seeing plenty of jobs” that fellow members of his community have found in embracing an area whose hills and natural beauty remind them of home, said Mr. Upreti, who doesn’t expect to ever leave Pittsburgh.
Other groups have settled here in smaller pockets from elsewhere in Asia, Africa and Latin America in recent years, though not with quite the same sense of clustering cohesion as the Bhutanese. The region has also long attracted well-educated immigrants to positions at its universities and medical centers, who tend to assimilate into the broader community.
Growth of international college students has also continued, even in the fall of 2017 in spite of concerns those numbers would wane due to the Trump administration’s policies. The University of Pittsburgh has 3,236 foreign students, more than twice what it had in 2000. CMU reports having 5,246 international students, 40 percent of its total student body, and 1,200 more than six years ago.
Clearly, it’s more common every year around Pittsburgh to encounter someone who may look, speak or dress differently from most Pittsburghers. It’s still just less likely than elsewhere, hindering overall growth.
“The challenge for us, given the high mortality rate, the age of the region, the age of the workforce, is trying to accelerate that growth rate at a level that allows us to overcome” those other factors, said Melanie Harrington, CEO of Vibrant Pittsburgh, a group trying to nurture a more diversified workforce locally. “Right now we just have a bigger hole to dig ourselves out of than other places.”
Gary Rotstein: grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.
First Published: April 2, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
Updated: April 2, 2018, 12:11 p.m.
