While most of Virginia is getting older as baby boomers age, Lynchburg is getting younger.
The median age of residents in the Hill City dropped by almost 5 years between 2000 and 2010, according to the U.S. Census. Nearly half of the city’s people are 30 or younger.
College students are not the only reason for the trend. People in their 30s accounted for much of the city’s 10,000-plus population growth in the past decade, a News & Advance analysis shows.
Engineering jobs, health careers and a lively downtown are factors in the trend, economic developers said Thursday.
Abe Loper, executive director of Young Professionals of Central Virginia, offered two theories about the city’s appeal to a younger crowd.
“As our downtown area becomes more attractive with cool restaurants and places to spend your time, and as the reputation for downtown becomes one of a safe and enjoyable place to be, you have more people in their 20s and 30s being attracted to it,” Loper said.
“They are, by nature, attracted to downtown urban environments.”
Christine Kennedy of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce saw the trend as fruit from several years of effort by the chamber to promote jobs that attract bright young people.
“The engineering sector is certainly one that is emerging in our community,” Kennedy said.
“Medical is another. And all of these are high-wage jobs, the ones we want,” Kennedy said.
She helped found the Young Professionals organization about 10 years ago, Kennedy said, and has seen it succeed in helping younger people connect with each other through educational and service-based activities and social events.
“I’m seeing more young people volunteering and actively engaging in the community,” Kennedy said.
Some of those volunteers are participants in the chamber’s Leadership Lynchburg program, she said.
Thirty-somethings accounted for about 8,000 people in the city in both 2010 and 2000, but their number is more significant in 2010 because of an apparent dip in birth rates for their cohort of the population in the 1970s.
Loper said Liberty University is also a major factor in the city’s increase of young adults.
The university “has grown exponentially in the last 10 years, and that means more people graduating and a greater likelihood they will stay in the area,” Loper said.
The wireless industry and other small engineering companies hire younger people, Loper said, and “young entrepreneurs seem to be doing pretty well,” including freelance photographers and web-page builders.
“There are a lot of young people who do that sort of stuff here in Lynchburg,” Loper said.
It also helps that CNBC and magazines often rank Virginia as one of the best states for business, Loper said.
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