Young college-educated professionals are not staying in Rhode Island, according to an estimate released by the U.S. Census Bureau late last year.

The state’s high cost of living and lack of job growth have both contributed to the departures of a few thousand Rhode Islanders over the last few years, a trend that has helped to reduce the state’s population by more than 11,000 residents since 2004, according to local economists.

But, not all young people want to leave Rhode Island. Friends, family and the state’s overall quality of life make it a great place to live, according to one group of the state’s young professionals. This loose network of friends and acquaintances said they are doing what they can to stay in the state, though it’s not easy.

“For the last month and a half I’ve been looking for a job, and I have friends in other states who ask why I don’t just go to New Jersey or New York City or [Washington], D.C.,” Rele Abiade, 29, said. “But, I’m nearly 30 years old, and wherever I move I want it to be more permanent. I want it to be home.”

For the last seven years, Abiade said, she has been trying to permanently settle in Rhode Island. A native of Providence’s West End, Abiade went to Classical High School and then Providence College, where she studied business and political science. Upon earning her degree she moved to Washington, D.C. and took a job at the White House personnel office under President Clinton.

She’s been in politics or policy ever since, working for former Congressman Dick Gephardt, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the , governor’s office in New Jersey, as well as a few political campaigns. The work was great, Abiade said, yet she missed home.

“Providence is just such a great small city,” she explained. “Everything is so close and it’s so easy to get around. And my family is here…. My family is everything to me.”

So, despite her good jobs, Abiade said she found herself always checking for openings in the Rhode Island area. In 2005 Abiade finally moved back to Rhode Island and took a job in the lieutenant governor’s office. Since the end of the 2006 elections in November she’s been looking for work again.

“I could go into consulting or project management,” Abiade said. “There is a lot out there if I’m willing to go anywhere. I realize I’m very lucky to have that opportunity, but I want to stay here.”

Abiade has been to several interviews and said she is hopes she’ll find something. At the same time, in talking to her friends about the opportunities Rhode Island offers, she said she knows she’s making it more difficult for herself by trying to stay. When she compares the number of openings on recruitment sites in places such as New York, New Jersey or Washington, D.C., there are simply many more openings available.

TALIA LEARY, 29, is a friend of Abiade’s who was able to move back to Rhode Island and find a good, permanent job in teaching. Originally from Newport, Leary went to Plymouth State University in New Hampshire and studied early childhood education. The first job she took upon earning her degree was in Washington, D.C.

“I found there were more opportunities in other cities than there were here when I first began looking,” Leary said. “They paid more too. [Washington], D.C., was more expensive, but I still earned more. There was more of a demand for teachers.”

Yet Leary couldn’t stay away from Rhode Island. Like Abiade, her friends and family in Rhode Island drew her back home after three years away.

“All my roots were here so I had to come home,” Leary said. “But, when I moved back here it was more difficult to find a job. It seemed to all depend on who you knew…. It definitely worked out for me. I was able to find a job within a few months of being back. But I know a lot of younger people my age who move out and then can’t come back due to the fact that there aren’t as many job opportunities.”

THE SITUATION Abiade and Leary describe is bigger than just the problem of a slow economy. Housing prices and comparatively low pay, they said, make many jobs here less desirable than those in other parts of the country. There is also the problem of what some young people see as a lack of opportunity for advancement. Sean Conners, another friend of Abiade’s, said it is that problem that will probably keep him from moving back to Rhode Island.

A Providence native and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Connors, 29, is in the second year of a two-year master’s degree program in International Affairs at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He began the graduate program after leaving his job at Rhode Island’s Department of Administration.

“I don’t think there are many big-time companies up there,” Connors said. “It’s kind of frustrating. When I was working for the state I looked at similar jobs in private industry where they did what I was doing, and I saw that I would take big pay cut if I went there…. Looking at Rhode Island, I’m really not sure if the opportunities are there.”

Looking for a job in consulting, if he doesn’t end up working for the federal government, Conners said he plans to job hunt in New York, Los Angeles or Boston. Rhode Islanders will follow the jobs, he said, and if they don’t bring jobs into the state young people will leave. More important, he added, they have to be jobs that offer opportunity to grow.

“You pursue higher education with the hope of improving your earnings potential,” he said. “But when I look around Rhode Island I don’t see that.”

RHODE ISLAND is not the only state and Providence not the only city to experience a loss in young educated professionals. Compared to some areas, Rhode Island is doing pretty well.

Roanoke, Virginia, Rochester, New York, and Cincinnati, Ohio are all cities that have seen major reductions in their number of young college educated professionals over the last few years.

“It’s pretty much the rule rather than the exception,” Stuart Mease, special projects coordinator for the City of Roanoke, Virginia, explained. “Ninety percent of the country’s metro areas are experiencing a net loss of young people, and they are going to about 10 percent of the country’s metro areas.”

The last decade has seen an acceleration of the growth of the nation’s biggest metropolitan areas — New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — at the expense of many mid-size and small cities.

Mease is paid by the City of Roanoke to get young people to stay. For the last few years, he said, city employers have complained that as their older workers are retiring they can’t find enough young workers to replace them. Between 2000 and 2005 the population of Roanoke between the ages of 25 and 35 declined by 11 percent. In a city with 60,000 college students within a 50-mile radius, that’s unacceptable, Mease said.

To combat this exodus, Mease has been working to convince employers to do a better job at reaching out to area young people. Mease travels to college classrooms and popular hangouts for young people to talk to them about why they are leaving. He has set up a page on MySpace.com for the city, touting what it has to offer. And only a few weeks ago the city hosted the Roanoke Holiday Career and Lifestyle Fair, an event showcasing local businesses to draw young people back. “We sent out an announcement in residents’ water bills that asked if their kids had moved away and do you want them to come back,” Mease said. “We had more than 1,000 people turn out, and many of them were young people home from school for the holidays. We told them what the area had to offer. We can’t offer you an ocean, we said, but we can offer you a lake.”

akstanle@projo.com