Legislators, BVU president warn Iowa’s young residents keep leaving

At Sunrise Pointe Golf Course clubhouse, Buena Vista University President Brian Lenzmeier used the final legislative forum of the session to press lawmakers on a question that has shadowed Iowa for years: why young people leave and do not come back. About 40 people attended the April 18 gathering, including local elected officials, community members, and students from Buena Vista University and Storm Lake High School’s iJAG program, as the conversation turned from routine policy updates to the harder issue of keeping the next generation in town.

Lenzmeier pointed to new data from Common Sense Institute Iowa that showed the state’s domestic outmigration remained negative for a second straight year, with Iowa losing 970 residents to other states in 2025 after a loss of 427 in 2024. The same report said foreign migration fell sharply to 5,903 net migrants in 2025, down 53.5% from 12,701 the year before. Even with total population growth of nearly 7,900 residents, Iowa still trailed both its 35-year average of about 10,250 and its five-year average of about 9,450. The report also put Iowa’s fertility rate at 1.79, below replacement level for two decades.

Those statewide numbers landed in a county that already feels the pressure. Buena Vista County’s population was estimated at 20,449 on July 1, 2025, down from 20,816 a year earlier. Storm Lake’s population was listed at 11,428, and the county’s foreign-born share, 21.3%, and bachelor’s-degree-or-higher rate, 22.2%, help explain why workforce retention carries such weight here. When graduates leave, local employers, schools, and public budgets all feel the loss.

A separate Common Sense Institute report from July 2025 deepened the concern. It found that in 2024 Iowa had the seventh-highest cumulative net outmigration of bachelor’s degree holders ages 25 to 29 in the country and the highest in the Midwest. From 1982 through 2024, the state saw a cumulative net outflow of 41,424 young adults in that age group. The report estimated that each departing graduate represents about $383,991 in foregone state and local tax revenue over a working life, and projected that a net loss of 3,445 college-educated Iowans in 2023 could mean $6.1 billion less GDP and $17.6 billion less cumulative personal income by 2060.

Sen. Lynn Evans of Aurelia and Rep. Megan Jones of Sioux Rapids tied that migration problem to the everyday realities of rural Iowa. Evans pointed to property taxes, job availability, and energy costs as factors that shape whether young people stay or leave. Jones said the state needs to modernize workforce programs and rethink how community-college and job-training systems are funded, including the 260E industrial new jobs training program that helps businesses create new positions and train new employees. She also argued that rural communities need to do a better job selling what they already have: strong schools, short commutes, and relatively affordable living.

The forum also touched on mineral-rights legislation, women’s health care access, parental-rights bills, and the future of community-college workforce programs, showing how broadly the public’s concerns reach beyond one demographic trend. For Buena Vista County, the session made one thing plain: the debate over jobs, housing, wages, and talent retention is no longer abstract. It is now part of the county’s long-term future, and Lenzmeier put BVU squarely in the middle of that conversation.