Worst Place for American Brain Drain Gets Hope as Covid Vaccine Hub

Pfizer BioNTech vaccines prepared for shipment at Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo plant in Kalamazoo.

Photographer: Morry Gash / AFP / Getty Images

The old factory town of Kalamazoo, Michigan has become a center for the production of Covid-19 vaccines. This may help the area’s economy to turn a corner after a number of difficult years.

Ranked highest in this year Bloomberg Brain Drain Index of Population Loss of Top Talent, Kalamazoo, like the rest of the US, has grappled with the job-destroying pandemic. But the city gained some hope when the Pfizer Inc. in neighboring Portage recently became a major distribution point for the vaccine. The drug manufacturer and German partner BioNTech SE are planning deliver 200 million doses to the US by July.

Still, the pandemic hit Michigan hard. Payrolls were 4 million in November, down 9.4% from a year earlier for one of the strongest declines among states, the Department of Labor show data. However, the slow comeback of automatic plant closures in spring is now being supported by a slow down the number of infections.

Meanwhile, places like Kalamazoo are likely to be helped by a pandemic-driven exodus from major cities that is drawing more families to smaller communities.

“People are looking for less friction in their lives,” and the trend of working from home illustrates that jobs can be performed effectively outside the office, said Ross DeVol, CEO of Heartland Forward, an urban development institute.

Kalamazoo also sees an economic renaissance in an asset that the city cannot leave: land. Local officials use land banks to acquire abandoned and ailing homes and commercial properties to pave the way for growth to return. The strategy is “take a deep breath and come up with long-term plans,” said Kelly Clarke, executive director of the Kalamazoo County Land Bank.

Six of the ten U.S. metropolitan areas that have lost the most brain power in the past four years are in the industrial midwest, according to the index. The top five is rounded off by Decatur, Illinois, after Kalamazoo; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Lima, Ohio and Elmira, New York.

The brain drain index tracks the loss of talented workers in the four years through 2019, with higher degrees, science and engineering degrees, and employment in white collar industries. It also includes changes in population and inflation-adjusted wage changes for science, technology, engineering or math – the so-called STEM disciplines.

Separately, the The Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index, which measures business formation and employment and education in STEM, shows that metropolitan areas that score the best show remarkable traction. The top spots are science-driven Boulder, Colorado, followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California.

Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, is in third place. Like many college towns, it attracts and retains businesses in new technology, including a Google campus. The top three had the same rankings in 2016.

However, rankings for four areas – Santa Fe, New Mexico; Manchester-Nashua, New Hampshire; Columbia, Missouri and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois – were down double digits.