Scranton Has a Talent Drain and a Talent Mismatch

By Bahram AzabDaftari, ImaginationTree.org

Scranton is often described as a city that people leave. We talk about brain drain, about young people packing up after graduation, about skilled workers heading elsewhere for opportunity. That story is not wrong, but it is incomplete.

What Scranton really faces is not just a talent drain, but a talent mismatch. We lose people not because they lack attachment to this place, but because the systems that shape housing, work, and opportunity no longer line up with the people who want to stay.

The result is a city that simultaneously struggles to retain talent and to meet its own workforce needs.

Talent Does Not Leave in a Vacuum

People do not decide to leave Scranton in isolation. They make that decision after weighing housing costs, job stability, career mobility, and quality of life. Increasingly, those calculations do not work in Scranton’s favor.

Young professionals and skilled workers find a limited supply of housing that fits their lives. Rental options are often outdated or unstable, and homeownership feels increasingly out of reach without family wealth or outside income. At the same time, wages lag behind rising costs, making it harder to justify staying even when jobs exist.

This is not simply a labor market issue. It is a housing and systems issue.

Nationally, experts cannot even agree on the size of the housing shortage, with estimates ranging from a few million homes to tens of millions. What is clear is that the shortage distorts local economies everywhere, including here. When housing is scarce, expensive, or mismatched to the workforce, people move, not because they want to, but because they have to.

A City Full of Skills, Yet Jobs Go Unfilled

At the same time Scranton struggles to keep talent, employers struggle to find it.

Healthcare systems, building trades, education, social services, and small businesses all report difficulty filling positions. The irony is that many residents already possess the skills, or could with modest training, but the pathways are fragmented.

Housing instability plays a quiet but powerful role here. Workers juggling unsafe housing, long commutes, or frequent moves are less able to pursue training, advance professionally, or stay in jobs long term. Employers then interpret turnover as a lack of commitment, when it is often a lack of stability.

This is how a mismatch forms. Talent exists, but the conditions needed to sustain it do not.

The Built Environment Shapes Economic Mobility

We rarely connect talent retention to the built environment, but we should.

Neighborhoods with deteriorating housing, vacant commercial corridors, and limited amenities do not attract or retain workers easily. Nor do they support upward mobility for those already there. People thrive where daily life is functional, safe, and dignified, where housing is stable, where streets connect to opportunity rather than isolate residents from it.

Scranton’s older building stock is often framed as a liability. In reality, it is one of the city’s greatest untapped assets. These buildings could support workforce housing, small businesses, studios, and flexible spaces that reflect how people live and work today. Instead, many sit underused or vacant, constrained by outdated rules and underinvestment.

When buildings fail to adapt, people leave.

Talent Retention Is a Neighborhood Strategy

At The Imagination Tree, we approach talent differently. We see it as something rooted in place.

Housing stability is talent retention. Neighborhood revitalization is workforce development. Adaptive reuse is economic strategy.

When people can afford to live near where they work, when neighborhoods feel cared for, when underutilized buildings become platforms for entrepreneurship and community life, people stay. They invest emotionally and economically. They build futures.

This is especially true in historically disinvested neighborhoods, where residents have long demonstrated resilience but have not been met with systems that reward it.

Scranton’s Challenge Is Also Its Opportunity

Scranton does not need to become something else to compete. It needs to align what it already has.

A workforce with deep local roots. Institutions that anchor employment. A walkable urban fabric. Strong neighborhoods that still function as communities. And buildings that, with the right policies and partnerships, can support modern lives without erasing local character.

Talent drain is not inevitable. Talent mismatch is solvable.

But only if we stop treating housing, zoning, workforce development, and neighborhood investment as separate conversations. They are not.

From Drain to Alignment

If Scranton wants to keep its talent and attract more, the work starts close to home.

It starts by preserving and improving existing housing before it slips further out of reach. It continues by allowing buildings to evolve rather than forcing them into obsolescence. It requires listening to residents who already understand what works and what does not in their neighborhoods.

Most of all, it requires recognizing that people do not leave cities. They leave conditions.

Fix the conditions, and the talent stays.

Author’s Note:
This essay reflects the author’s professional experience in housing and community development, informed by a broad body of local and national government data, including but not limited to, City of Scranton Strategic Economic Development, NEPA Thrives (Scranton Area Community Foundation), Center for Community Progress (2023) and National League of Cities (2025). These references are based on public reports from 2022–2025 and are relevant to the current economic situation in Scranton/Northeastern PA.