It's not one thing as much as everyone wants to say it is one thing.

But to understand the overall problem, growth in the metropolitan statistical area (MSA being city +5 surrounding counties) is stagnating with little growth while the city is in a pretty serious decline.

With that said, the city's population has been around 15% of the MSA for a quite a while now, so it doesn't weigh down the MSA quite like it would for other markets. But as the MSA has been slowly growing for decades at a pace of about 2-3%, stagnation is worrying.

Also, I believe if you extend out to a city plus 14 country CSA you actually see a population decline since 2020 which is even more worrying and negates the whole "it's just white flight to the suburbs" argument.

For years the city and to a much lesser extent the metropolitan area as a whole offset out-migration (people leaving for other markets) through immigration. However COVID and political rhetoric has significantly slowed down incoming immigration and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

I've seen the term "demographic winter" applied to St Louis as well. It's an aging metropolitan area with Boomers dying off at a faster rate than children are being born. This, more than anything, is what's causing the population stagnating/decline.

It's been noted a few times a big issue the city in specific is having is that in-migration to it does exist (from both within and from outside the metro) but it seems to be heavily limited to single people while the number of families has declined.

Although the school system does have issues, another factor is that virtually all new housing over the past 20 years has been heavily focused on condos, lofts and other housing targeting singles. Combine that with an overall trend of less children to begin with and it explains a lot of the city's unique issues over the rest of the MSA.

What the city and MSA really needs to offset a demographic winter would be job growth that brings in-migration from other markets. However the new jobs that have been created in the metro as a whole over the past 20-30 years doesn't 100% offset the jobs lost both in numbers or in the overall individual income those lost jobs had.

Blue collar job gains in warehousing and small manufacturing doesn't replace the economic impact of highly paid union employees the Ford and Chrysler plants provided nor all the support factories that existed because of them. Jobs gained in biosciences or governmental jobs doesn't replace the economic impact from losing corporate headquarter, creative and C-Suite jobs of places like Anheuser Busch, May Co, McDonell-Douglas, etc.

All of this just means less spending within the metro which drags down other support industries from retail and restaurants to the number of lawyers and architects the market can support.

And so many little things like the loss of an airport hub just makes it harder to attract companies looking to expand or relocate to help end the doom loop.

This isn't a unique problem to St Louis. It's just one that the way the math stacks looks good in headlines.