El Paso’s population is getting older, growing more slowly and losing many of its younger residents – demographic shifts that could reshape the region’s workforce, schools and housing market, but could guide the way the Borderland prepares for the future.
That was the message Friday from experts in education, the workforce, housing and affordability during the first El Paso Forward summit at the El Paso Community College Administrative Services Center, 9050 Viscount Blvd.
About 250 people attended the half-day summit hosted by El Paso Matters, which has been leading data-driven conversations in population trends in the region and providing in-depth reporting on the impacts of those demographic changes.
El Paso Matters CEO Robert Moore opened the summit with a presentation on El Paso’s population trends. Tracy Ayrhart, vice president of data and research for Texas 2036, spoke on statewide trends.
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“Trends show us where we’ve been,” Moore said. “They can give some hint of where we’re going, but they are not prescriptive of our future because we all have agency to change things and to transform the direction where we’re going.”
Aryhart said El Paso’s aging population reflects a broader trend expected to reshape Texas. By 2060, projections show Texas will become a “super-aged” state, with more than 21% of residents 65 or older.
That shift – which includes El Paso County – could affect everything from school enrollment and the workforce to health care and infrastructure, she said.
“We have to know what’s going on to know how to respond,” Aryhart said.
Impacts on education
El Paso County schools, traditional public districts as well as charters, 10 years ago enrolled more than 177,000 students. Last year, that figure was at 160,000 – a decrease of nearly 10%.
James P. Vasquez, superintendent of the Socorro Independent School District, pointed out that for years, SISD had seen enrollment increases that it struggled to keep up with. But the district started seeing an enrollment decline in the 2023-2024 school year, which impacted the district’s revenues and resulted in layoffs.
“We had to put a reduction in force two years ago and, you know, unfortunately, it wasn’t the numbers that we had anticipated. It was 23 employees that were impacted by that, but that’s 23 too many,” Vasquez said.
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The trend in enrollment loss is not expected to change as declining birth rates continue. Coupled with the loss of funding to voucher programs, area school district leaders are considering additional teaching cuts.
The Ysleta and Socorro school districts are also looking to tax ratification propositions that, if approved, would bring in millions more in tax revenue with little to no impact on most homeowners. Vasquez acknowledged that’s a tough ask of voters who are facing rising cost of living and potential tax increases from other local governments.
Rural school districts are also facing declining enrollment and are having to reduce their budgets, lay off teachers and consolidate schools. The Tornillo Independent School District cut four teaching jobs, and plans to move all its seventh- and eighth-graders to the district’s high school. It will also turn its former middle school into a pre-kindergarten through sixth-grade campus.
Brenda Carrillo, an Algebra I teacher at Tornillo High School, said while enrollment is declining, classroom sizes are growing and straining teachers.
“That is very concerning because as an educator, how can we teach effectively? How can we address every student and give them the individual attention that they deserve? As an educator, we want our students to feel seen, supported, engaged, and safe. So our only concern is that we don’t lose educators in the process,” Carrillo said.
About 820 teachers from the El Paso, Socorro and Ysleta school districts – nearly 10% of all teachers in the districts – either retired, resigned or were terminated during the last fiscal year, which ended in June. That same year, the districts only hired a combined 470 teachers – 260 at EPISD, 160 at SISD and the remainder at YISD.
Future workforce pipeline
As school districts grapple with declining enrollment and a reduction of the workforce, other job opportunities that provide living wages need to be created for the region to have a successful future, experts said.
While El Paso has a lower cost of living than many of the places residents move to, those communities generally offer much higher wages. As a result, families often have an easier time achieving a middle-class standard of living elsewhere, Moore said in his opening presentation.
“I think we have issue with paychecks and opportunity,” said Ahsan Choudhuri, co-founder and CEO of ARC Aerospace and Defense Systems. “If you don’t have a paycheck, you cannot ask people to stay. If you don’t have an opportunity, you cannot train people.”
Choudhuri said companies that need skilled workers won’t come to El Paso if the talent is not here.
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“We need talent, and if we fail to produce talent, then we have no chance,” Choudhuri said.
Skilled workers also struggle to stay in El Paso if the right jobs are not here.
“The goal is to always establish roots where you call home,” said Ricardo Rivero, a communications technician at El Paso Electric and a member of IBEW Local 960.
Rivero left El Paso for Midland after graduating from El Dorado High School in 2016. He said many of his co-workers in Midland asked him why he came from a larger city to work in a smaller market, adding that El Paso is the “goal” city to move to by others in smaller towns.
He started his career in Midland when he could not find work in his hometown of El Paso, before returning here nearly a year ago. He had to leave El Paso, he said, to get the training and experience he needed to land a job here.
Leila Melendez, CEO of Workforce Solutions Borderplex, said the region has done well for economic development, but is lacking in human development efforts.
“I appreciate all of our efforts. I just don’t know that we are aligned behind a common goal,” Melendez said.
She said the region needs to work toward creating an economic development strategy around people’s skills and occupations, rather than being focused primarily on a particular industry.
That would shift the focus to creating skills clusters that can serve multiple industries.
“I believe that our strategy needs to be at a human occupation centric level. Human capital is a driver of productivity, technology, and so is capital. But I would love for us to focus on the humans, so that they can use technology to then run the capital, versus the opposite today,” Melendez said.
Affordability, meeting housing needs
El Paso’s housing needs and household compositions are also shifting.
K.C. Griffin, CEO and Partner of Integrity Asset Management, an El Paso-based apartment management company, said the region needs to meet housing demands while preserving the existing housing stock.
“I think in the private sector, what we’re finding is a shift in what we’re building and what historically the older product that’s already in El Paso caters to, is very different from what we need for the future,” Griffin said. “We do have a senior population that’s changing dramatically.”
Griffin said the private sector needs to focus on multi-generational housing such as townhomes and homes with casitas, increasing the supply pipeline, and taking care of the existing housing.
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El Paso needs to move away-from a longstanding focus on single-family homes, said Shelly Rivas, legal counsel for the El Paso Housing Opportunity Management Enterprises, or HOME.
“We are way behind in building multifamily housing,” Rivas said.
Rivas referred to the situation as the “El Paso paradox” where affordable housing is being “squeezed out” by higher income renters because of the change in makeup of households. Part of that change is that more people with higher incomes are choosing to rent as buying a home has become less affordable.
“Five years ago, the average household was three persons – that number has declined, and what it does, it adds approximately 2,000 new households into El Paso. So while the population might be declining, the need for multifamily housing is increasing,” Rivas said.
Cindy Conroy, the first El Pasoan in decades to serve on the board of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, said creating public-private partnerships to obtain tax credits to rehabilitate properties into affordable housing is one way to address housing shortages.
“I think really the utilization of public-private partnerships is what will really – across the board, in everything that we do – enhance this community,” Conroy said.
The post El Paso Forward: Changing population will reshape region’s future, experts say during El Paso Matters’ summit appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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