Portland has had a rough couple of years, and as a result its national reputation has taken a beating. The New York Times is no longer offering up paeans, as it did in 2014, to Portland hipsters: “bearded, on skateboards, brewing kombucha.” This is now the “Anarchist Jurisdiction.”
And yet people are still moving to the Rose City.
Where are these fearless newcomers coming from? As in those bygone days when everything about Portland was cool and charming, they’re mostly decamping from larger, more expensive cities in other states or from smaller Oregon locales, the latter likely being driven by the traditional migration of young adults to the closest ” big city” to make their mark on the world.
Portland, with about 667,000 people, is the 26th largest city in the US, up from 29th in 2010.
To give some shape to this continuing, if diminished, upward population trend, the rankings website Stacker has used US Census Bureau data to estimate the number of people who’ve moved to Portland in the past handful of years. Below are the top 10 metro areas “sending the most people to Portland.”
10.San Jose, Calif.
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 2,173
9. New York City
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 2,250
8. Corvallis
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 2,368
7.San Diego
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 2,803
6.Phoenix
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 2,939
5. Eugene
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 3,130
4. San Francisco
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 4,217
3.Los Angeles
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 5,101
2.Seattle
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 6,251
1. Salem
Residents moved to Portland 2015-2019: 6,969
–Douglas Perry
dperry@oregonian.com
@douglasmperry
