When Jaci Christopher graduated from South Park High School, she never considered attending college in the Pittsburgh area.
Instead, she headed for State College in Centre County. After graduating from Penn State University, she accepted a job in the nation's capital.
"I was looking for a bigger school atmosphere, and that was the main reason I went away," Christopher, 23, said Tuesday.
U.S. Census Bureau figures released today suggest that many Pittsburgh-area women in their 20s made similar choices. The number of 20-year-old women in Pittsburgh plummeted by 26 percent, from about 4,550 in 2000 to 3,380 in 2006, according to an analysis of 2000 Census and 2006 American Community Survey data.
By comparison, the number of men that age dipped from 3,530 to 3,520 over those six years.
The statistic, if true, should be a wake-up call for the region's leaders to improve career opportunities for women, said Heather Arnet, executive director of the Women and Girls Foundation, Downtown.
Women in the Pittsburgh area earn an average of 69 cents for every dollar earned by men in comparable positions, and most of the area's corporations have no female executives, she said.
That might seem like more of a post-graduation consideration, Arnet said, but many people start choosing their future home when they pick a college.
"It's their first opportunity to choose where they want to live," she said.
Lindsey Reiland, a Baldwin High School graduate, moved to Arizona after graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and said several of her friends also moved West because jobs are more plentiful.
"Pittsburgh is one of those places where you stay there forever or you get out right away," she said.
Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research, said it's hard to tell whether the survey results are real. The 2006 figures come from the American Community Survey, an annual sample of 3 million households nationwide.
Although the yearly survey is supposed to replace the long-form questionnaire the Census Bureau uses to measure education, income, ancestry and other factors every 10 years, Briem said he's hesitant to compare its numbers to those of the 2000 Census.
The Census Bureau's official estimate of Pittsburgh's 2006 population -- 313,000 people -- shows the city has been losing about 1 percent of its population annually since 2000. The survey population estimate of 297,000 would increase that loss to 2 percent per year.
"I wouldn't be absolutely convinced that there's that big of a drop," Briem said.
Demographers and statisticians won't have a good gauge of how accurate the survey's estimates are until the 2010 Census gives them an actual population count to compare the survey against, he said.
The trend could be true, based on what some Pitt students have observed.
Mike Schaab, 21, of Greensburg, said most of his female high school classmates went "to State College or out of state."
By comparison, many of his male high school classmates are attending area colleges and meeting female students from Philadelphia and Buffalo, he said.
But Michelle Zeglen, 19, of Broomall in Delaware County, came to Pitt from the Philadelphia area.
"I just love the city and the campus," she said.
The Census figures surprised Zeglen, because she said women outnumber men in most of her classes.
Julia Zebley, 20, of Richeyville in Washington County, believes one factor driving women away could be a lack of teaching jobs.
"A lot of my cousins are Pittsburgh-born and raised. They want to be teachers, and they just can't find jobs here," she said.
Crystal Schumacher, 25, of Baldwin, is teaching eighth-grade science in Florida because she couldn't find a job here after graduating from Westminster College in New Wilmington.
"Whenever you went to job fairs, the line would be out the door," she said.
Larger text
Smaller text
Print this article
E-mail this article
