Kelly Kenoyer: Welcome, Mouhcine Guettabi, regional economist for UNCW, thank you for joining us.
Mouhcine Guettabi: Thank you for having me.
KK: So, our population growth here in the Wilmington area is largely from people moving here. And I noticed in your recent presentation that the vast majority of our workforce is from somewhere other than Wilmington, for basically every sector. What is the deal with that?
MG: Two things. Let's unpack it in two parts. The migration towards the south in general has been remarkable over the last five years, obviously boosted partially by the significant Covid-related migration. And this is not a Wilmington-specific phenomenon. It's something that has happened in most of the southern states, or sunshine states, and what we've seen is, if you go back to 2010, about 30% of the increase in population was due to what we refer to as natural increase. That's the difference between births and deaths. In 2024, only 8% of the state's population growth is due to natural increase, and the rest is coming from domestic migration, meaning people move in from other states and international migration.
At the local level, the numbers are even more pronounced. If we were to exclude migration, all three counties [New Hanover, Brunswick, and Pender] would be losing population because there are fewer births than there are deaths. The growth is largely coming from individuals relocating from other states. Brunswick is the 14th fastest-growing county in the country, the fastest-growing county in the state, and largely has been growing from domestic migration.
To the second part, when there is a new match between an employer and an employee, the data asks the question, essentially, 'is Kelly coming to WHQR from another employer within New Hanover County or the Wilmington Metro, or was she working somewhere else within the state of North Carolina? Or was she working somewhere else outside of North Carolina?' And the point that you raised is that for a lot of sectors, the share of people that are moving to a new employer from within the region is relatively small. The other thing that's important is that there is massive variation across sectors, and the more technical skills, or the sectors that require the more technical skills, this importation of talent is much more pronounced.
KK: Interesting. Yes, I am one of those people who moved here from a different state for my job.
MG: As did I.
KK: But I think the interesting thing that I've seen in this data is that a lot of the times this is higher education kind of jobs that are coming in. So for example, you brought up the financial sector as a big growth spot for New Hanover County, but only one in four of the people taking those jobs is from Wilmington. Is that something to be concerned about if you are a local?
MG: So it's twofold. On the one hand, that explains, partially, for example, the increase in demand for housing, because when we see increase in employment growth, given these numbers, that means three out of four of these newly hired individuals are potentially demanding more homes or newer homes or new apartments. And that explains that tension that we saw, or that pressure on housing demand.
The other aspect of this, from an economic development standpoint, that raises the really interesting question of, to me, when we think deliberately about economic development, you want the benefit to accrue to the original residents of these places that are flourishing.
And so it certainly raises opportunities questions about, where should we potentially allocate our resources? Should the university be training more finance graduates? Should we be training at the community college people to potentially take advantage of some of these jobs? Because I think that that, especially given that a lot of the growth, as you pointed out, the finance sector, for example, over the last decade, has grown by 40% and to your point, wages in that sector tend to be considerably higher. So if we're thinking strategically about how do we ensure that the locals are benefiting from this growth at the local level? We need to play matchmaker, or we need to be deliberate about having conversations with employers, with the institutions that educate the citizenry, to ensure that the benefits are shared broadly.
