WBC realizes keeping young people in Wyoming is key to state's future
If there’s any segment of our society that should be most concerned about young people leaving Wyoming after high school or college and not coming back, it’s business owners.
That’s why we weren’t that surprised to see Wyoming Business Council CEO Josh Dorrell recently lead a conversation with University of Wyoming students about their post-college plans. Still, it’s refreshing to see anyone in state leadership actively pursuing the idea that something needs to be done to address the exodus of youth from the Equality State.
Less than a year ago, we wrote in this space about the fact that lack of workforce is one of the state’s largest challenges. In that editorial, we said failure to secure enough reliable employees leads to reduced hours and unexpected closures, which can be more than just an annoyance to local consumers. It also will mean that as Wyoming residents continue to age, there won’t be enough younger people around to help them with daily tasks, either at home or in care facilities.
There are a variety of reasons for the state’s workforce shortage, ranging from lack of affordable housing to failure to pay a living wage to health care availability. But Mr. Dorrell and his team at the Wyoming Business Council (WBC) obviously want to drill down deeper on the issue. So, they recently asked UW students to complete a short survey and held a panel discussion Sept. 10 to encourage dialogue between leaders and students.
“It turns out that the people that are affected most by the economic challenges that Wyoming faces aren’t old people like me,” Mr. Dorrell said during the event. “They are young folks. They are people that will inherit the decisions we make.”
At the beginning of the event, Mr. Dorrell shared that the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey indicates that more than 60% of people who are born in Wyoming leave by the time they’re in their 30s, and most do not return. That’s the highest rate of any state in the country. Additionally, more than two-thirds of UW students said a future in Wyoming is a “maybe” or a “no.”
Instead of bemoaning those numbers, however, those who attended the event shared their thoughts about how to keep more young people in the state most of them love.
Ralph Fawaz, a Master of Business Administration student and former UW football player, moved to Laramie from Oklahoma and said he hopes to stay in the state after graduation. In Laramie, he said, he found a sense of hope that he didn’t have while growing up.
“What inspired me to go out and help, really, (is that) I do love this place,” said Mr. Fawaz, who founded Tele-Hope, an Albany County nonprofit that matches UW athletes with youth in grades 6-12. “I love this community.”
Sophomore Daljit Kaur, a Burns native majoring in accounting and economics, loves her home state, too, but said she’s unsure whether she’ll be able to follow in the footsteps of her parents, who moved to rural Laramie County from New York.
“There’s kind of an opportunity cost for me to stay here,” Kaur said during the discussion. “Sometimes it feels a little disappointing to feel like there’s something left on the table. I don’t want to feel like I’m leaving something behind by choosing to stay here.”
One challenge seems to be connecting young people with the resources and potential employers who can help them realize their dreams. Another is lack of economic diversity.
In fact, the young people who participated in last month’s event said job opportunities are the No. 1 factor in their generation’s approach to deciding where to live after graduation. Closely behind are proximity to family, access to third spaces (places where people gather to hang out and meet one another), happiness and the economy.
According to Sarah Fitz-Gerald, chief strategy officer at WBC, of the 266 surveys completed by UW students, 33% said they planned to leave Wyoming for better job opportunities, 23% said they would leave due to cost of living, and 13% said quality of life was driving them out.
None of that is shocking, but it might point to potential ways state leaders can take action to try to keep more young people closer to home or entice Wyoming natives to return to their home state.
The Business Council is already working on some of these core issues. Ms. Fitz-Gerald said housing and child-care availability are two areas of focus. The agency also is supporting students inspired by last month’s conversation who want to hold another panel discussion, this time with employers coming to campus to tell them about job opportunities in Wyoming.
And WBC leaders aren’t done with gathering and analyzing data. There’s more information to mine from the surveys they already have, and they continue to ask Wyoming students for their stories. Anyone at UW or attending a Wyoming community college or trade school, as well as those still in high school, are encouraged to fill out the online form at https://wbc.pub/ShapeWYFuture_Public.
“It’s really easy to kick the brain drain problem down the road for another 10 years,” Mr. Dorrell said at the conclusion of the Sept. 10 event. “But I think what we’re saying is that we don’t want to kick it down the road. We want to put things in place to experiment with, ‘How do we stop this?’”
That statement alone is refreshing. The next step is to follow through on it. Here’s hoping the WBC and others do just that.