New Jersey’s ‘Millennials’ Are Leaving The State: Study

How do you play the millennial version of Monopoly? Answer: You just walk around the board, never paying rent or buying a home.

Did that joke offend you? Then there’s a good chance that you’re one of the many New Jersey millennials thinking about leaving the state, according to a recent study.

Nonprofit advocacy group New Jersey Future released a study on Thursday that claims the Garden State’s population of “millennials” – people born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s – is slowly shrinking. Despite a nationwide growth of 6.8 percent, the state of New Jersey saw its population of millennials decrease by 2.4 percent from 2000 to 2013, researchers said.

The study analyzed U.S. Census data from 2000 and 2013 to find out where millennials, “Generation Xers” and “Baby Boomers” live around the state, and which municipalities have disproportionate representations of each of these generations.

Researchers then applied three “smart growth metrics – the degree to which uses are mixed and near each other, the density of the street network, and the presence of a downtown or center – to determine the living preferences of the various age groups and how they have shifted over those 12 years. (Read the full report and see the study's methodology here)

WHAT DO MILLENNIALS WANT?

“The new demand for mixed-use, walkable downtowns is being driven largely by the preferences of those in the millennial generation, who are rejecting in large numbers the car-dependent suburbs of their parents’ generation,” researchers stated.

“Millennials are gravitating to walkable, more urbanized locations with jobs, housing, entertainment and amenities all within easy reach, as Generation X did before them,” researchers added.

And just like the joke at the beginning of this article, the search for affordable housing may be one of the millennial’s most defining quests, researchers claim.

“A number of municipalities scored high on smart-growth metrics and yet are not seeing high concentrations of millennials,” New Jersey Future Director of Research Tim Evans said. “A lack of affordable housing options for people beginning their careers could be keeping millennials out of these towns and cities."

HOBOKEN: ‘MILLENNIAL CAPTIOL’ OF NEW JERSEY

Here are some other claims from the study:

• About 21 percent of New Jersey’s 565 municipalities scored well on all three metrics of smart-growth, making them attractive to millennials.
• About 32 percent of New Jersey towns did not score well on any of the three smart-growth indicators, making them unattractive to millennials.
• Hoboken is the state’s "millennial capital," with the highest concentration of millennials in the state. About 45 percent of the mile-square city’s population falls in the 22 to 34 year old age group, more than Boston. (In neighboring Jersey City, 22 to 34 year old residents make up 28 percent of the city’s population, a slightly higher concentration than Denver, Seattle, or Austin, Texas.)
• Some towns that scored high on the study but without high concentrations of millennials included: Roselle Park, Union, Hawthorne, Hillside, New Milford, Cranford, Montclair, Rockaway Borough, Totowa, South Orange, Kenilworth, Maplewood, Leonia, River Edge, Pennington and Englewood Cliffs.

Are you a millennial thinking of moving to (or from) New Jersey? Tell us why in the comments section.

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Photo: ITU Pictures / Flickr Commons