Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines prepared for shipment to the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo plant in Kalamazoo.
Photographer: Morry Gash / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Morry Gash / AFP / Getty Images
The former industrial city of Kalamazoo, Michigan, became a manufacturing center for the Covid-19 vaccine. This can help the region’s economy turn a corner after a few difficult years.
With this year’s best ranking Bloomberg’s brain drain from the population loss of top talent, Kalamazoo has struggled like the rest of the US with the job-crushing pandemic. But the city gained some hope when the Pfizer Inc. plant in nearby Portage recently became an important distribution point for the vaccine. German pharmaceutical and partner BioNTech SE plans to deliver 200 million doses to the US by July.
Still, the pandemic hit Michigan hard. Payroll stood at 4 million in November, down 9.4% from the previous year due to one of the sharpest declines among states, the Department of Labor data show. The slow return of auto plant closings in the spring, however, is now being helped by a decrease the rate of infection.
Meanwhile, places like Kalamazoo are likely to be helped by a pandemic driven exodus from the big cities that is attracting more families to smaller communities.
“People are looking for less friction in their lives” and the work at home trend shows that jobs can be done effectively outside the office, according to Ross DeVol, CEO of Heartland Forward, an urban development institute.
Kalamazoo also sees the economic revival in an asset that cannot leave the city: the land. Local authorities are using land banks to acquire abandoned and struggling homes and commercial properties to pave the way for growth to return. The strategy is “take a deep breath and make long-term plans,” said Kelly Clarke, executive director of Kalamazoo County Land Bank.
Six of the ten US metropolitan areas that have lost most of their intellectual capacity in the past four years are in the industrial midwest, according to the index. Completing the top five after Kalamazoo are Decatur, Illinois; Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Lima, Ohio and Elmira, New York.
The brain drain index tracks the losses of talented workers in the four years to 2019, with advanced degrees, science and engineering courses and jobs in white collar industries. It also incorporates population changes and inflation-adjusted wage changes for science, technology, engineering or mathematics – the so-called STEM disciplines.
Separately, the The Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index, which measures business training, employment and education in STEM, shows that the metropolitan areas with the highest scores are showing remarkable traction. The main places are Boulder, Colorado, followed by San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California.
Ann Arbor, headquarters of the University of Michigan, ranks third. Like many university cities, it attracts and maintains companies in new technologies, including a Google campus. The top three had the same ranking in 2016.
However, ratings for four areas – Santa Fe, New Mexico; Manchester-Nashua, New Hampshire; Columbia, Missouri and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois – fell in double digits.
To access the full data set of the 2020 Bloomberg Brain drain index, click on here.
To access the full data set of the Bloomberg Brain Concentration Index 2020, click on here.
– With the help of Alexandre Tanzi