It's nice to see North Carolina attracting people. I moved here in 2019 (from Ontario, Canada), and have been pleasently surprised at the quality of life, abundent nature, and half-decent housing prices (that last part may not last for long). My view of NC has changed from just another southern state that I wouldn't think much about, to a possible long term home.
Of course like many states my experience is heavily biased by my location within the state (Research Triangle Park, Raleigh/Durham area). The only major downside so far has been that most of the tech jobs are concentrated in med-tech, advertising, or sales, however with Google/Apple coming to town hopefully that'll change.
This is a story familiar to every Canadian, and to many Australians and Britons:
Mid-career executive accepts job offer in the US in Charlotte, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, or Tampa. Is excited about the opportunity and the raise in salary, and curious about living in a different country, but a little nervous about moving to a "right wing Republican" state "without healthcare".
A few months in, the reports back to friends and family change. More and more mention of the "amazing" house they found in the suburbs with an outdoor pool (!) that is so much less expensive than in Toronto or Vancouver, the "fantastic" school the kids attend with sports teams and cheerleading and other afterschool activities, and—especially—how unbelievably cheap everything is at the supermarket, mall, and gas station.
That family is never moving back to Canada. This happens over and over again.
> A few months in, the reports back to friends and family change. More and more mention of the "amazing" house they found in the suburbs with an outdoor pool (!) that is so much less expensive than in Toronto or Vancouver, the "fantastic" school the kids attend with sports teams and cheerleading and other afterschool activities, and—especially—how unbelievably cheap everything is at the supermarket, mall, and gas station.
It's not that simple. The cities I mentioned are all in the US sunbelt, and Canada (and the northeast and northern midwest US) can't compete with the southern and western US's. The sunbelt has cheaper land, as well; Vancouver (the only part of Canada with competitive weather to the US sunbelt) is jammed into the Fraser Valley between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains. The prairie provinces have plenty of land (which is partly why Edmonton and Calgary are growing so quickly), but have terrible winters.
On the other hand, the weather and cheaper land don't wholly explain the competitive differential, either. It's not unusual for an American to move from New York or Boston to San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, or Miami, or a Canadian to move from Toronto or Montreal to any of those cities. It's also not unusual for someone to move from San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, or Miami to New York or Boston, despite the latter cities' colder winters. It is unusual for someone to move from NY, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, etc. to move to Toronto or Montreal; I've calculated elsewhere (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25367731>) that an average Canadian is 27 times more likely to move to the US than an average American is to move to Canada.
Another differential is cost of living. Why Canadians pay much more and have access to less despite living in a country that is 95% culturally, economically, and politically identical to the US, I do not know. I didn't fully understand the disparity until I read the amazing stories in a Reddit discussion. victorn72's account (<http://np.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1ueai3/why_are_our_pr...>) caused my jaw to drop open. This is why every large US border town along the Canadian border has malls where, every day (in normal circumstances with the border fully open) you see hordes of Canadian shoppers in parking lots frantically opening sealed electronics and clothing to try to bypass import duties when returning home.
>What's the strategy for matching the top performers that are leaving?
You've hit on the problem with the Canadian governmental strategy that izend mentioned; those who leave aren't being replaced on a 1:1 basis in terms of quality.
In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (<http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...>), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (<https://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_...>) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* More to the point, they're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
Seconded, we moved to RTP area in February and have fallen in love with the state already. The weather is much different than CA and we’re still adjusting (107 heat index today!) but it’s great actually getting rain and thunderstorms. Anecdotally but I’ve noticed a lot more California, Arizona and New York plates even since we’ve gotten here so it seems like the secret is getting out.
I've looked at north carolina as a post-california destination. The crazy policy on PFAS in the water is really the biggest downside - https://www.pfasaction.org/northcarolina and many others.
Not sure that applies to the entire state. Our municipal water keeps an eye on it and tries to source from places that don’t have high levels. None is better than some but that is a silly reason to not consider a place, especially with filtration being capable of removing it in the worse cases.
If these inbound states don’t manage their growth well, they will have the exact same problems California does: unaffordable housing, and homelessness. There have been many articles the last year about well-heeled migrants driving housing shortages wherever they move to. America’s terrible approach to housing production outside of a few select places is a huge a drag on our country.
California's friendliness to homelessness and "hobo code" goes back over a century, and is an innate part of its culture. I don't think that's changing any time soon.
IIRC, Jack London wrote about it. But I'm looking it up and it seems like maybe Jack London traveled the whole country as a hobo... so I'll have to double check. That was in the 1890s during one of the "great depressions".
Homelessness vs Hobo-code will be an eternal fight. People want to help the homeless, but not so much that they come flocking into the city.
The point is about housing affordability, which drives homelessness. There's not some mystical force at play here, housing becomes too expensive, so some people can't afford it. The types of by-choice homeless people you're referring to are a tiny fraction of the homeless population.
> America’s terrible approach to housing production outside of a few select places is a huge a drag on our country.
Not sure about that. The local mechanism to prevent housing expansion is kind of counter-productive, but there may be a rational for that. No matter you agree with it or not, suburban residents seem to enjoy their way of life and don’t want to have massive crowds move into their towns.
The New Urbanist architects have an interesting take on this. Suburban residents like their private way of life. Their houses, yards, garages, etc. But they’re not so much into the surrounding public realm. The stroads, the strip malls, the freeway interchanges, the parking lots. So the thought of any intensification or extension of all that, freaks them out.
It presents a hope, at least, that suburbanites could be won over with qualitatively better implementations of density, relative to the same development pattern but bigger and more intense.
I don't bet on it happening in our lifetimes. Everyone alive now knows only the current suburban model, and people really don't like change with regards to zoning policy. Especially in Southern suburbs.
It's already happening. Not everywhere all at once, but it's happening. The idea that no American has ever experienced anything other than suburban housing is ludicrous.
I think a lot of people living in suburbia today remember, and are unhappy about, the disappearance of Main Street and the town square. A lot of that gets blamed on capitalism, developers, Walmart/Amazon, etc. but a decent part of it is required by planning codes.
> don’t want to have massive crowds move into their towns.
Unless you're proposing a China-style system of internal passport controls, there's no way to prevent this. NIMBYs are fighting the tides on this. People move where there are jobs and nice weather. In trying to hold back the ocean, NIMBYs create even more problems.
Not if the new residents can afford much higher prices than the locals. They’ll bid the available housing up to a point that locals can no longer afford it and some become homeless. This has happened in many places in the US.
What do you think will happen to the assessed value of the existing owners’ property after all the rich transplants buy up the neighborhood? What do you think that will do to their property tax? What do you think that will do to their ability to remain homeowners?
And what about their children? They’ll be directly priced out.
If vermont has 67% inward migration, why don't they show up on the "top inbound" list? I guess maybe these migration stats are using pure counts instead of percentages?
There's a note at the bottom saying they removed some small states.
Idaho is also a small population state, but it's still 3x bigger than Vermont.
However, I'm not sure why Arkansas is not highlighted as a top gainer. It has the same net migration numbers as South Carolina, and a larger population than Idaho.
If I'm sitting on a 800K+ property that is essentially equivalent to a 350K property somewhere that ALSO has a Chipotle and less traffic, why not move?
Of course the problem becomes within a few years: I'm sitting on a 550K property and the traffic sucks (again). I'll move somewhere and start a Chipotle. Cycle continues.
Kind of weird that California is tied for 3rd on the list but they make it a point to say people are "fleeing" California before mentioning the other top 3.
People have been leaving Illinois and New York for several years now, so it's probably less surprising than California's more recent stagnation and potential decline.
For the most part, in any statistic involving "Total number of people doing X" California is likely to be first.
I don't see hard numbers anywhere, but assuming that the total migration numbers are within spitting distance of proportional to the population, California would also be, if not leading the list, close to the top in terms of total people entering the state as well.
I agree, that is my assumption about why most people talk about the California migration. They are most likely to personally know someone who has migrated out of California(no tech people). I am from Ohio and can think of 5 people off-hand who left California and live here now. I can't think of another state with more than 2 people exiting. Maybe I am biased because of what I read online.
Not sure they want to become Republican, as much as they just want to live in a Republican area because, generally, taxes and crime are lower. However, I don't think most ever make the connection in their head as to why that is.
but yeah, you can just draw down arrows from NY and PA to FL. They're so pervasive there's a joke about their license plates... blue and yella will kill a fella. A play on the snake idiom, because of their awful driving.
I’ve noticed that. Living in Virginia I see the folks going north and south on the 95, and almost always without exception the PA drivers are tailgating, passing, going 20 above the speed limit.
In NorCal on the 5 you might also see a fully tinted purple low riding car every few weeks (I'm talking about a specific vehicle I see because I drive it all the time) with Washington plates that drives like a bat out of hell. Not that native CA drivers are much better, but they are.
I dunno. Most of these people probably aren't moving to the deeply red, shithole regions of these states. They're moving to the suburbs of purple areas like Charlotte or Charleston.
I've long thought that living in a blue city in a red state provides a pretty good balance.
When it comes to CA, The only reason people "want" to move from more expensive to cheaper places is price alone, not any other characteristics - supply and demand doesn't work like that. More expensive = more demand.
People can't afford to live in expensive places the way they'd like to. What's cute most years in CA (I haven't seen Covid-data, which probably changes things) is that net migration among people making >100K is positive. So wealthy people are pushing others out. Yay free market?
Is there anything naturally "Republican" about having large amounts of land for (frequently still Democratic-leaning) cities to continue to sprawl into in red states, avoiding the crunch that hit the California cities that ran out of space earlier?
Another way of phrasing it: people want to move to lower population density.
Could make sense, as a native Californian I’m utterly baffled by Republican state policies like Texas and Florida and would want to move out, so I assume there are some who are the reverse of me.
Moving to Florida or Texas is great until you find yourself in a position where you need a competent, funded government to respond to a crisis that can only be solved through collective action (hurricane, power outages, pandemic). Plus living somewhere with lax environmental and consumer protections can have net negative long term consequences. Some states like Georgia don’t even have yearly car inspections, which goes about as well as you would think. It’s easy to just look at the LCOL and good weather, but you are giving up a lot of services and protections you took for granted living in a higher tax state. Maybe it’s worth it for some people, but it’s not for me
To the contrary: people are moving to FL or TX precisely because of the lack of government response. There are plenty of people who want to see that government intervention is kept to an absolute minimum.
I don’t disagree with that analysis, but like I said different strokes for different folks. My personal view is government is the best tool we have to solve some collective problems such as natural disaster response(and the other more controversial ones like climate change and covid), but I realize that is anathema to the average techno-libertarian hackernews denizen. It’s probably a good thing people can self select into the society they want to live in by voting with their feet
As someone who lived through the recent Texas blackout, I would say the general competence of governance is fine here- that problem was notable by its relative rarity.
Comparatively the continual problems w/resource management (water, power, wildfires) in California seem relatively horrific to this outsider.
The wild fire issue is only a thing due to a lack of regulations.
Historically small and mega fires swept though all the California forests, often burning 4x the amount that’s burned in this historic fire year. Human intervention to stop those burns has created very unhealthy forests. Having houses in all these areas that burn is just a bad idea and a lot of hubris about the extent of our control over nature.
Regulation to stop building in those area and enhance fire resistance of buildings is the solution, not more “freedom”. Housing developers have almost zero incentive to reduce their profit margin in order to fire proof the house or not build and thus not earn money.
And water use isn’t a solved issue in other states. Either they happen to have a wetter climate or they aren’t any better.
Power is a legitimate issue, but then I’d say California is actually doing pretty well because the climate change is a larger issue. Move fast and break things is better than doing nothing.
Well When it comes to competence I’d disagree on that too. It’s a hard problem and they could do more but they also could do worse. Looking at similarly difficult issues, I don’t see any state that does well. It sure isn’t the climate denial states.
And as an outsider, Texas seems very incompetent dealing with hurricanes and the power outage, which was rather predictable. The official’s then trying to scape goat issues that were not the primary cause does not inspire confidence.
But maybe we’re both biased towards our home states. An outsider from France probably would think both of them could do a lot better.
Skeptical. Possibly more like *more people want to live in republican-built societies and economies... without any intent on changing their emotional/mental model of their politics.
Sort of. Housing in the Sunbelt is cheaper because there is more land/supply, and if there are jobs there, your dollar goes further. Of course people will bring their own politics with to a more favorable economic environment, some of which is not because of politics but because of localized economic conditions.
If Texas and Florida housing is cheap, it's not necessarily because of Republicans. Texas has, comparatively, some pretty high property taxes for example. Sure, wages have been held down by business friendly conservative politics, but with remote work becoming more common, your wage isn't tied to the politics of where you live.
(my note: Texas, Florida, and North Carolina will eventually tilt more progressive from young folks born or who move there, and as older conservatives "age out" at a rate of about 1.8 million people/year [1])
Taxing property is much fairer than taxing income. If you want to pay less tax move to a cheaper community rather than a community that charges less taxes.
It also stops speculation because the property becomes an obligation that has to be taken care of.
Taking Florida as an example, older people move there to escape the cold and death tax. I guess keeping wealth in your family and not having to work for it is a keystone of a Republican-built society & economy.
that's a strange takeaway to make without evidence.
alternate hypotheses:
remote work enabled more people to earn a high salary typically found in a large city or coastal area while moving to lower cost of living areas.
also, people who lost their work in industries heavily impacted by quarantine (hospitality, food, restaurant, retail) moved back home or in with family to save money.
I admittedly haven't seen numbers on how many jobs have moved permanently remote, but anecdotally I don't see "former in-office, now permanently remote" jobs as any large percentage of these moves. I believe a large number are retirees or those who found new employment in a new state.
>Key takeaway for me: more people want to become republicans.
Most people don't even vote. The most obvious thing I can see here is people are moving from high CoL areas to low CoL (which also tracks with the growth in remote work).
>Are you suggesting CoL has nothing to do with political policy?
When it comes to factors that affect CoL, both parties are pretty much bipartisan in their approach.
>but they sure want to live wherever republican policy dominates.
Because, historical, republican states have smaller cities, which mean less demand and lower CoL. Someone priced out of San Francisco isn’t going to find it cheaper to live in Phoenix than Chicago. As a result, prices are already shooting up and will probably do so until there is an equilibrium that follows a supply/demand curve.
One party has physically more people than the other. A Republican migration can never change major and swing Democrat areas by voter numbers alone, whereas a Democrat migration can change a Republican area by voter numbers alone.
Only a local partisan reality or influencing others can alter that, a Democrat migration can turn the entire country* Democrat if anyone coordinated, as only a few counties have to be swung just a little bit. I don't feel like this is a partisan observation, mathematically the opposite is not true like if you imagined a different nation that you didn't care with the same reality it is easy to notice that the opposition party does not have the numbers.
*Not all local representatives, just electoral college for Presidency, the entire Senate, most of the House of Representatives.
Right, I think there would only be once chance to do it as I also think states would raise their voter registration residency requirements.
So it would require a SuperPAC to get people to move from Democratic areas to the select Republican and swing counties at once, or heavily helped by existing and pandemic net migration.
People want to move to cheaper states (mostly to be able to buy property). I doubt political affiliations have anything to do with it. In fact if we dig one level deeper I'm willing to bet most of these moves are happening to liberal enclaves in republican states (e.g. Austin, Texas).
>People want to move to cheaper states (mostly to be able to buy property). I doubt political affiliations have anything to do with it.
This is such a crazy disconnect, though. They might not want to move to a "red state", but they "just happen" to like the ultimate result of red state policy.
>In fact if we dig one level deeper I'm willing to bet most of these moves are happening to liberal enclaves in republican states.
Sure, because they put more stock in maintaining their political self-identity and label than they do in accepting the fact that they might actually prefer living in a place that's the result of red state politics. Even if that's liberal enclave.
I know people who moved from Austin to southern California and moved back within a year due to their surprise at the how far left California society is in general. Austin is fairly left-leaning but "extreme left" in Austin is still fairly "middle of the road" in California.
The economy in Florida (and Texas) is great. Lots of money there right now. I had a friend move from Ohio to Florida, he has 4 times the customers down there and they all spend more.
Tourism is usually considered part of the service industry and not resource extraction. Resource extraction is more like mining, timber, and extracting other raw materials from the earth.
Real estate agent in a red agrarian area turning purple... so every market is going to be different, but in my market it's coastal progressives moving inland for:
1) Weather
2) Cost of living: housing, property taxes
3) Quality of life: No commute, slower pace of life
In the process there is a cultural and political struggle underway, and it's the newcomers supplanting the old ways. I've had a few prospective buyers call and say that they are escaping the godless/liberal coast and headed back to conservative small-town America, but I have yet to have a single one of those actually convert to becoming a buyer, FWIW. Point being, I foresee it not being about people wanting to become Republicans, and more a demographic shift where many traditional red areas are going to turn purple, if not blue.
I think of the California cities in the "Top MSA Origin Cities (Moving From)" list as being more Republican-leaning. It could be California Republicans fleeing to red states.
Do that many dems really believe that their policies don't significantly result in an increased cost of living?
I thought this was a compromise dems knowingly and willingly made, but it seems lots of people don't want to admit low cost of living has anything to do with being a red state.
It's sad to have seen such flight from Chicago. I'm from there originally and just moved back after a pretty long stint in NYC. Hoping the city can turn it around in the next couple of decades.
Until the debt burden is worked out for Cook County and Chicago, I don't see much hope. The governor even supported a progressive income tax increase (promoting it with his own funds) to stem the bleeding and voters turned it down, so property taxes must rise as there currently is no mechanism to shed the enormous public service obligations that were incurred.
Chicago is a beautiful city and the summer is great (although it can be too hot for a city with a bad winter) but I don't see it becoming attractive to people in the next decade. Bad weather, high crime, and subpar nature in the region. People who work from home have better options, even though it does have some nice features; it's affordable, walkable, has rich culture, better food than most place in America, and lake Michigan of course. Not a bad place to live, but again, if you're working from home and don't have a family in the area, you would probably move once you have kids and not looking to live in a big city anymore.
Based on the census, it looks like most of the net population loss has been outside the Chicago metro area. People have always been coming-and-going in and out of Chicago; that's how big cities work.
I thought Chicago was doing well recently, at least the last several years I recall it always being mentioned positively as having the amenities of larger cities without the costs.
Sure the violent crime is rough, but my understanding is that it was really concentrated and mostly the result of gang activity.
From my understanding, people are leaving Chicago and Illinois I'm general because of taxes and politics. Fixing that seems more difficult than moving.
If by politics you mean the liberal lean, then yes - Republican voters are leaving Illinois. There are currently 13 Democratic reps and 5 Republican reps from Illinois. With the new census and redistricting, the state loses 1 seat. But it will be a Republican seat - 13 Democrats and 4 Republicans.
Based on the limited census data we have, there is a small-to-mid possibility that it will become 14 Democrats and 3 Republicans in 2022. It will probably all be in the southern part of the state. I'd put it at even odds that in the northern part of the state, they redraw boundaries a little bit to shift some Republicans from Underwood (D) to Kinzinger (R) to increase the election odds for both.
If you lean Republican, you might think politics are broken. If you lean Democratic, you might think politics are exactly right.
Thanks. This report then is mostly meaningless. If 2000 people moved for one state compared to 50000 for another state, and the percentages are close - how would I know that?
I want to see number of people moving in and out. That's good information. Percentages without magnitude are just confusing noise.
But as somebody upthread already said, a raw number will just say California has the most people moving out and probably also the most people moving in because they're the biggest state.
Of course like many states my experience is heavily biased by my location within the state (Research Triangle Park, Raleigh/Durham area). The only major downside so far has been that most of the tech jobs are concentrated in med-tech, advertising, or sales, however with Google/Apple coming to town hopefully that'll change.