Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.

Welcome to our program.

We hope you enjoy the show.

Please make plans to join us each week as we discuss the region's most important economic development initiatives with a panel of experts.

Communities across the country are in a battle to attract and retain top talent.

We're sitting down this week with an expert that has helped cities across the country prepare for and win that battle by showcasing why they're a great place to live.

Join me for my conversation with livability.com editor in chief Amanda Ellis.

Coming up on economic outlook.

For 30 years they've been a go to source for people looking to find the best places to live, work and play.

They annually work with and research hundreds of communities across the country to develop a lot of data to help inform relocation decisions and a chance recently to sit down with Amanda Ellis, the editor in chief of Livability.com for a conversation about why we live where we live and how do we connect with talent prospects.

I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Well, hi there and welcome.

So good to see a lot of a familiar faces here today and some new ones, too.

Welcome to Salute to Business 2024 being presented by the South Bend Regional Chamber in partnership with First Source Bank.

I am Mark McGill, the MC of the afternoon.

I'm also the director of Member Relations for the Chamber.

And again, so glad to see all of you here.

Thank you for coming.

Now please welcome to the stage a man that needs no introduction.

But my contract says I have to introduce him.

He's the chamber president and CEO Jeff Rea.

Well, that was a much shorter introduction than I ask him to give me, but.

well, that's okay.

I'm just kidding.

Good to see everybody.

Thank you very much.

So, please, my first important message is start eating your salads as well.

We want to keep program moving.

We know you've got other stuff to go today.

So listen with one ear and eat salads.

I'm only going to take a minute or two of your time more so because I want to just say thank you to all of you for your support of the chamber throughout of the year.

We couldn't do the work we do without you.

And today, like every salute to business, is a real testament to the power of the business community.

When we all come together and together, we're moving the needle.

We have so many partnerships and some great things are happening in the region and we're excited to talk more about some of those today.

I do want to say thank you again to our sponsors.

You'll hear a lot about them today, but again, without the financial investment from our sponsors like first source and everyone else, you wouldn't we wouldn't be able to do this.

I would be remiss if I didn't think our board and our volunteers so we exist because hundreds of volunteers help us with different things throughout the year.

And so I want to say thank you to our our volunteer board of directors and those volunteer years.

We have a really talented team at the chamber.

I'm fortunate to work with some folks who work really hard to put on a great event today and great events all throughout the year.

And so please, if you're not familiar with our team, reach out to us, connect with us.

We'll come visit you.

You come visit us with you.

You have entrusted us to work on your behalf in a lot of different spaces.

And so we work out.

We wake up every day to go work on your behalf and try to help make this a better community.

On behalf of all of us at Barnes and Thornberg, we invite Jeff Rea back to the stage and welcome our special guest, Amanda Ellis.

Well, Amanda, I'm honored to be up here with you today and have a chance to chat with you about maybe just for a little set.

Give us a quick livability.

Who is livability?

What does livability do?

Sure thing.

And thank you so much for that.

Nice welcome.

I'm super excited to get to be here in South Bend with you all.

So livability is both a content platform and we are also a partner for communities when it comes to talent attraction, I'm the editor in chief of a site we run called Livability.com where we're all about small to midsize cities, specifically why they're great places to live and really a relocation resource for millions of people every year on finding their next great place to live or a place they can find information about a city that they're eyeing for relocation or want to know more about.

We also partner with Chambers and economic development groups across the country on content marketing for talent attraction, including the South Bend Chamber.

And so what that looks like is content at livability.com that that really reaches talent.

Thinking about relocation.

We know from the types of search terms that bring people to our platforms that that's what they're thinking about.

So really telling those positive stories of places helping to shape that narrative.

And through that work we keep a really strong pulse on the landscape of talent attraction overall and have also done a lot of our own research on American relocation habits and patterns, which I think we're going to be talking more about in the next few minutes.

Great.

So, Amanda, in our audience today is our business leader.

Our small business has one person, our biggest one has more than 6000.

It's the top of mind of nearly every business leader, this talent attraction piece.

Everybody wants that that new young talent that the whatever talent they can get.

Give us just a general state of talent attraction.

I think like when we think about it, sometimes we think everybody's moving to the southeast or the southwest.

Just give us maybe the overall landscape of trends that you're seeing happen in the talent attraction space.

Yeah.

So as far as why it's more of a focus now, which I think is something that often comes up initially.

So pretty much everyone in this room has probably noticed that there have been some workforce issues, shortages, etc.

over the last couple of years, and there's a lot of different reasons for that.

Everything from a lot of early retirements during the pandemic to immigration numbers were down during that time to changing attitudes about work, all kinds of stuff playing into that.

But ultimately it's created a situation where it's not just companies competing for talent anymore, but communities competing with each other for talent as well.

So that's sort of some background on that As far as the hot spot regions for migration that the Midwest and the Southeast have really performed very strongly in terms of migration now and in recent years.

Great.

So let's follow up on this.

Communities competing because we're one of those communities competing, wanting folks to come here versus somewhere else.

Can you highlight maybe maybe some example cities or maybe even some things that cities are doing well that's helping them in this talent attraction space?

Yeah.

So there's kind of a couple of different ways to look at it.

So you can talk about like strategies that communities are investing in and then sort of what infrastructure are they creating that's going to be attractive to people.

So I know one question that comes up alongside that is if you think about like things that a lot of communities have, whether it's schools or public art or things to do, great restaurants like to an extent, all cities kind of have some of that stuff.

So it's still so I look at those things as like the baseline for getting on people's radars as far as why those are important.

So like if you think about public art as an example, are your murals going to make people like individually by themselves, make people want to move to a place probably not.

But is it going to be part of their perception of the vibrancy in a place and whether it's something they could see themselves or whether it's somewhere they could see themselves, if they have an opportunity to go there?

And those are the types of things that they're seeing.

Yes.

As far as other strategies that communities are employing, a lot of them are related to marketing.

So like working with groups like livability, thinking about, you know, having those that online presence for relocation information at targeted social toward people that you think might be interested and relocating to your community.

An interesting angle on that.

So the chamber in Greensboro, North Carolina, has done some really interesting work targeting their communities, boomerangs.

So people who, you know, maybe grew up there and left or have some connection to the place but aren't there anymore.

They've had some real tangible success targeting those folks and bringing some of them back through targeted social media and other effort.

So that marketing piece is really important as far as some other strategies, networking groups for people new to the community.

To use an example a little bit closer to you all, Indianapolis has done some cool things with their Indy fluency program, so that helps people who maybe even haven't come to the community yet.

But they're thinking about it.

They can kind of look through a list of local volunteers, find someone that maybe they have some life things in common with and be able to talk to a local about, hey, like I'm thinking about coming.

Do you think I would like it there?

What neighborhoods would be great for me?

So those are a few thoughts on some of the landscape there of what places are doing great.

I want to dive deeper into this Midwest thing, right.

So because again, this idea that southeast, southwest are hot, it's warm down there.

There's no snow.

But I think we are seeing kind of a little bit of resurgence in Midwest.

Could you just talk about what make what would make the Midwest attractive to people who want to relocate?

Yes.

So I think some of these characteristics I mentioned the Midwest and the Southeast.

So there are some characteristics they share that definitely keep them both strong in that area.

So affordability is something that's super important to people.

And one of our surveys, 70% of our respondents said that affordability would play a role in a relocation decision.

And both of those regions are really strong on that front, particularly housing.

Do you think the Midwest makes an even stronger argument for affordable housing overall than the Southeast does?

We also see a lot of solid, small to midsize cities to pick from in both of those regions.

And weather wise, which already talked about a little bit, you definitely have more of a solid four season lifestyle here, which is something that a lot of people appreciate and look for.

So I think if you were looking for more year round temperate warmth in the southeast, getting to be pretty warm here these days, but here you do have a real winter and ways for people to enjoy outdoor activities and get outside with that as well.

It's interesting in terms of visiting your site because it's sort of looking at the gamut of all cities, big and small is, you know, I think historically we thought that young people only want to be in the big cities and then maybe they come to the small and medium size as they get later.

What's the what's the trend in that space?

Or is are people more interested in cities are size or do they all want to be in Chicago, New York, Boston or LA?

So I saw some really interesting research recently on this.

It was not our research.

It was some Harvard research that looked at.

So people who are 26 years old, where do they live in relation to where they lived when they were 16?

So we have this idea in our heads of what that is.

I think like that everyone goes far away to school, then they go far away again to start their first job and there's like all of this movement happening.

So this research show that that is actually not the case for the majority of people.

So they showed that 90% of 26 year olds live within 500 miles of the census tract they lived in at 16.

So census tracts are smaller, a lot smaller sometimes than zip codes.

Even 80% of 26 year olds lived within 100 miles of the census tract They were in at 16.

So that's like less than a two hour drive.

And I think if you think about, you know, even in your own life, what that looks like for you at 26 versus 16 and people, you know, I think that that research more accurately depicts like what we see people we know actually doing versus this idea we have about it.

So, yeah, there are still people and people that want to try out living in a big city for whatever reason.

But I think there are also plenty of people, probably more either embracing their hometowns where they grew up or a city that's not too far away.

So that's so the trend in recent years, people are saying you said they come to the community because of the job.

Now people are saying, well, sometimes they're coming because the community and I'll worry about the job later.

Is there truth to that?

Are people picking communities for jobs second, or is jobs still leading the way?

What is what's your research telling you on that?

So both are really important, I think.

Which one is more important to you individually, obviously depends on your own specific goals and where you're at in life.

But most people are not picking a place.

They think it's cool and going there without a job.

Most people kind of want to have a plan.

And we talked already about how many people are prioritizing affordability and like the financial aspect of their decisions that we all have to think about.

So most people do want a job offer in hand or remote work position that they're taking with them into a place to go.

But there is so kind of this push and pull with the quality of life piece versus the job piece in that even if you had a job opportunity in a place, if it doesn't look like somewhere that you think you would enjoy your life, you're probably not going to go.

So a lot of times the job piece or the income piece is like the leading factor.

But there's definitely both are really important.

Let's shift to remote work.

So it seems that communities across the country are trying to find.

The pandemic has taught them people can work from anywhere, so why not work from here versus somewhere else?

What's happening in the remote work space?

And is that sort of driving some of that talent attraction as well?

So I have a lot to say about remote work.

So I think my leading comment on this one is a lot of us thought coming out of the pandemic that that was going to be a total game changer and no one who works in offices was going to go back to offices the way that they used to.

That hasn't really been what's happened.

So the biggest takeaway from all of that movement is really the emergence of hybrid work as a pretty standard thing.

So most people now that their jobs could be done remotely, have at least some flexibility to do that sometimes.

We know that that's really important to people and it's something that competitive employers are embracing as they're able it depends on where you look for a stat, but the the percentage of the workforce that is all remote there has been an uptick is anywhere from like 5 to 15% of the overall American workforce, depending on where you look for that information.

That is a little bit more than you might have seen before, but it hasn't been the total shift that we thought that might have looked like.

That being said, there were there was some movement when people were newly remote and figuring out like, I guess I could go somewhere else and do my job if I wanted to.

So that did happen.

I think a lot of that has settled out at this point.

There are still communities that prioritize that remote worker attraction piece as part of their strategy.

And so I think that can be a good thing, not something you want to be the whole strategy or overly kind of hang your hat on.

But I think having that as a piece of it can be a good thing.

We also recently did some research about how people are thinking about work as related to where they live now that we're a few years out of the pandemic.

And that was interesting.

Some of the findings from that.

So it was sort of divide it up.

About a third of our respondents said that they would be less likely to make a work related move now.

And part of that reasoning was because they're more remote jobs than there were before, but another 30% said they'd be more likely to move for work now because they think that the landscape currently offers more opportunity, also more opportunity to potentially move and reduce your costs, that sort of thing.

And we also saw again, circling back to the hybrid piece, that that's something that's important to people.

So even if you don't want to be a fully remote worker, pretty much everyone views hybrid flexibility as a perk and that is definitely positively correlated with talent attraction.

So even if you are moving for a job offer, seeing that your employer is going to offer those options and flexibility is really key.

So let's stay in remote work for a second because a couple of things happened generally at the State House.

So trying to figure out what kind of incentive might make a remote worker.

Local communities are coming up with real dollars saying, I'll pay you X dollars if if you move here and do those move the needle at all.

I mean, do they give us some perspective on on even as a community as we're thinking about that or are those good strategies that we should be thinking about?

They can be they can be good strategies.

So some background on that.

The first community that did that was Tulsa, and they started experimenting with that pre-pandemic 2018, I think their program was called Tulsa Remote, and they paid remote workers who had a job outside of the state of Oklahoma, $10,000, I think, to to move.

And there's stipulations, other stipulations like you had to stay at least a year and like some different things that they set up around it.

And they are still doing that.

They've seen some success with it.

They also were the first place to really do that.

So it was very new and shiny and now it's something that a lot of communities have experimented with or adopted in some way.

If you're curious what some of those look like, not that anybody should leave South Bend, of course, but there's a site called makemymove.com that aggregates those different incentives that communities have.

If you're curious what some of those more tangible benefits look like overall, it seems that a lot of people who move for those types of incentives probably would have come anyway.

But that being said, it's another tool in your toolbox.

I think another thing to think about there is do you want the perception to be that you had to pay people to come?

But at the same time, there's a lot of small like our is huge.

There's so many smaller communities that if you don't live anywhere in that region, you just never would have even thought about.

So it can also be another way to get on people's radars.

So early in our conversation, we're talking about differentiating and all our companies are trying to differentiate themselves from others as they're attracting talent or communities trying to do the same thing.

Talk a little bit about how to do that.

Like I like like we like we're bullish on all the assets we have, but we have the same assets that a lot of others do.

In your work at livability, you are kind of deciphering through that.

You've got your best places to live.

Some of that talk about really strategy to differentiate yourself from others.

So I think I already mentioned this earlier, but at the end of the day, to an extent, there's going to be some similarities in the amenities that communities are offering.

So I talked a little bit earlier about really viewing those things as the baseline for getting on people's radar.

The other thing I would add to that is if you think about the communities you're competing with for the attention of talent, it's not necessarily every place in the world for a specific person or a specific group of people, right?

Or even the whole country, because most people aren't looking that broadly.

If they're thinking about making a relocation decision, they're probably looking at a much smaller pool of places.

So, for example, like think about somebody that maybe like was from the state and like wants to get back closer to family.

So like, I want to get back to Indiana, but I don't want to be in the town I grew up in, like what else is available for me?

Cool.

So now that's a much smaller pool that they're looking at.

So you just want to make sure you can be on their radar for what they're trying to look at, preferably like near to the top of your their list, if you can.

So just to frame some of those, doesn't doesn't every community have these things like.

Yes, but they're still really important.

So livability obviously is a great site in terms of helping folks understand what different communities look like.

And I think that, you know, it's an interesting challenge for communities, right?

How do we how do we get the information out there for people to see what what any recommendations, if you will, from a community in terms of that that outwardly facing towards toward that town?

Yeah.

So we know that the the handful of main ways that people are gleaning information about places.

So a lot of them are tied into marketing, but also word of mouth and firsthand experience with places are important.

So definitely some tie ins with tourism or visiting a place and relocation and the just sort of what you've heard about it.

And from a marketing standpoint, Internet research, social media and rankings and media coverage of a place are a big part of shaping that perception.

So a lot of it is really tied into the marketing piece.

And it's interesting, like we all have good things happening in our community.

We all have some challenging things in our community that we want to be honest about as well, to talk about even that balance, right?

When somebody asked me about the community, probably telling you all the great places to go and the good things to do, probably not talking challenges, but but those are real and everybody's having those to talk about just sort of the the positive and negative and how you balance some of them.

Yes, you're definitely right.

No place is perfect, Right?

So I would say look at take an honest look at what, you know, those things are.

And if there's something that you, you know, is one of those things or like a number, like maybe it's, you know, your crime rate just as an example.

And you know that that's not necessarily like where you want it to be.

So for one thing, if there's something that you want to shift, of course, the first thing is you want to be thinking in the bigger picture about how to shift those things.

And if it's like a number that you don't love, how can you adjust that?

Of course, the solutions probably aren't like overnight easy things to do.

So I would also say think about the whole story of those things.

And so to go with our crime rate example, if you know that's a number that you're that people are going to ask about thinking about, well, let me delve more into this and see like, what are the types of incidents that are playing into that?

How big of an area is that number referring to?

Like just get some more information that you can have in your head so that you have talking points about whatever that thing is, instead of glossing over it, and also knowing that a lot of those challenges are things that you are definitely not the only place experience experiencing.

Like I know just, you know, costs going up, for example.

Obviously that's happening everywhere.

And so a lot of communities, you know, people are like, well, our apartments used to cost as much and now they're and they're like, that's crazy.

But that's also happening in every city.

So in front of you here, we've got a community leaders on the political side, on the business side, a really a collaborative community.

As we're beginning to wrap up our time advice to them, you know, because I do think we we feel the sense of frustration.

Right?

We don't have enough people to fill the jobs.

What the heck are we going to do?

We got to do something to to get people here.

So give us some advices.

As a community, we want to be ahead of the curve and and competitive with these others.

That are, you know, some of those top cities.

So leave us with some some lasting advice or some things that we should be thinking about doing to help help make sure we're there.

Yeah, I think if I could leave everyone here with one takeaway today, I would really challenge you to be intentional about how you talk about where you live.

So both in terms of like if you're traveling or talking with coworkers who maybe aren't in this market, whatever that looks like, I think we're all very guilty of talking to more about the challenges and the things we don't like or our complaints about where we are, but try to instead talk about the cool things, the things you love, the awesome things leadership is doing, What's brought you here or kept you here?

Because I think in aggregate there's a lot of people in the room today.

So if everyone here does that, I think over time that has a really positive impact on those perceptions and eventually those talent numbers.

I think I was going to end with that.

But I'll ask you one more.

Sorry about that.

So this is your first trip here.

You came last night.

You had a chance to walk around a little bit, even a few minutes this morning before we got here.

What's your impression of what you've seen so far?

So I've really enjoyed my time.

It was definitely nice.

A lot of times I get in too late to really enjoying anything, and I actually was here early enough last night to get to explore downtown a little bit.

Got to go over to Notre Dame and walk around and yeah, I definitely want to talk.

I'm glad you asked.

So definitely want to talk some about what I think you all are really thriving on and what I think is uniquely good.

So River City, people love that.

Of course, you're not the only one, but that's always a cool amenity.

I love how this convention center is built where you can actually see that That's definitely not something you always see.

Also, the lighting is cool.

That's not something I really seen anywhere else either.

The river lighting as far as so college town, of course.

I think that comes with a really nice energy that's really tangible and that a lot of people appreciate.

And we also see in the numbers things that college towns tend to perform really well and they tend to rank well as great places to live overall.

But as far as specifically data wise, a couple of things.

They tend to be more diverse overall, more educated overall, which of course makes sense.

So I think that's something that we definitely see play out here.

And to talk a little bit more about that data.

So every year we collect over 100 data points on every city in the country that has a population between 75,000 and 500,000.

So that's a lot of places.

We look at eight different categories, and that's everything from education, safety, environment, health care, look at all that in aggregate.

And the two that you all perform really notably well on compared to other small and mid-sized cities, housing and cost of living and amenities.

So Housing Cost of Living course speaks to that affordability piece.

That data also takes into account like tax rates and income growth and, you know, rental versus home affordability, that sort of thing.

And then amenities looks at everything you can think of.

That would be something a fun thing to do for someone.

And like how diverse is that for people?

I mean, that's something else that you all have done really strongly on.

So those are a few things I feel like are real strong points.

So thank you for sharing those observations.

So Amanda Ellis, the editor in chief of Livability dot com, has been our guest.

They encourage you first to visit livability .com to see a little bit more about Amanda and her team and the work they're doing.

Please join me in giving Amanda a big thank you for joining us today.

That's it for our show today on behalf of the entire team here at PBS Michiana WNIT, thank you for watching or listening to our podcast to watch this episode again or any of our past episodes.

You can find economic outlook at wnit.org or find our podcast on most major podcast platforms which encourage you like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

I'm Jeff Rea I'll see you next time.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.