VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: Portland Is Losing Some of Its Biggest Fans.

Multnomah County has lost residents for the past three years, according to Portland State University’s Population Research Center. Before 2020, it hadn’t lost people since 1987, and that was just a one-year blip in an upward run that began in 1984.

In the most recent PSU estimate—for the year ended July 1, 2022—the population fell by 2,321. The cause was “out migration,” PSU says, which is a fancy way of saying people bailed.

That may not seem like a lot in a county that had 812,563 residents as of July 1, 2021, but it’s a reversal of fortune for a city that once attracted migrants from other states the way locally roasted Chemex coffee draws men with sleeve tattoos.

Josh Lehner, a state economist, says his department had expected a rebound in 2022, but it didn’t arrive. The longer the slump in population lasts, he says, the less likely pandemic-related moving patterns are to blame, and the more likely it is that Portland has a problem.

Portland has a problem.