domestic migration

Feudal Future Podcast — Jewish Migration: The Southern Shift

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 16:44:58 -0400

America's Jewish geography is undergoing a dramatic transformation, shifting from its historical concentration in the Northeast to flourishing communities across the South and West. This fascinating evolution reflects broader demographic patterns while revealing unique insights about Jewish identity, community formation, and cultural adaptation.

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Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Elite Democrats Could be Obliterated by the Decline of New York, Minnesota and more

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 17:39:50 -0500

Much ink has been spilled – metaphorically at least – over how American politics has been nationalised to an unprecedented degree. Now people even choose to move based on politics, which makes more relevant the sharp regional divides, one reason why the candidates are spending their money and energy in only a handful of states.

This was not the case back when many states, even my adopted home of California, had a vibrant two party system. Today, most regions are increasingly monolithic, as people tend to move to states compatible with their ideological bent. Forty states now endure “trifecta” status, with one-party control of all branches of government, up from around 20 as recently as 2008.

In the past, Democrats could win elections, even at the presidential level, in the South, the current base of the Republicans, as well as in states such as Utah and Montana. After all, both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton came from Dixie and also had some allies in Congress of a similar disposition. Today, the ranks of moderate – and politically savvy – Democrats in the South are down basically to a handful.

The Democrat base now lies in the if anything even more politically homogeneous West Coast and Northeast. Apart from Maryland’s Larry Hogan, there is not a single prominent Republican in either region; in all these states, the Congressional delegation tends to be overwhelmingly Democratic. The rise of Donald Trump seems to have accelerated the pace of change, wiping out the last vestiges of East Coast-style moderate Republicanism.

In New York, California, and Illinois, the three big Democratic states, Kamala Harris is up by as much as 20 points and never less than 15. At the same time, in the two big GOP states – Texas and Florida – Trump is ahead by comfortable, albeit closer, margins.

This regional divide is not exactly healthy for the overall unity of the country. More than anything, it reprises the long-standing conflict between established elites and wannabe, often less well-groomed, challengers. As the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun noted, there are always conflicts between rougher, more aggressive forces on the fringe and settled peoples living in urban centres.

Read the rest of this piece at Telegraph.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Net Domestic Migration Gains & Losses by State since 2000

Wendell Cox — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 19:02:23 -0400

Since 2000, there has been substantial net domestic migration between the states of the United States.

The largest gains have been in Florida (3.4 million), Texas (2.7 million), North Carolina (1,5 million), Arizona (1.4 million and Georgia (1.0) million. Five other states exceeded 500,000, including South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, Colorado and Washington (Figure 1). However, Colorado and Washington, along with Oregon (which gained over 400,000) have slipped into net domestic migration losses, with costs of living driven up due to excessively heightened housing costs.

The largest losses were in New York (4.0 million), California (3.8 million), Illinois (1.9 million and New Jersey, at 1.1 million. Ohio, Massachusetts and Louisiana lost more than 500,000 net domestic migrants (Figure 2).

During the period, annual net domestic migration numbers were not reported for 2000 or for 2010.

Complete data is in the referenced spreadsheet: download/view here

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Chicago is One Kind of Town

Tim W. Ferguson — Wed, 05 Apr 2023 11:41:24 -0400

The geographical resorting of America continues apace–the separation of peoples based broadly on ideology. You see this population movement on both coasts, accentuated by the pandemic and remote work.

It’s about other things, of course–costs, space, weather–but it’s a lot about politics. And after Tuesday’s mayoral election result in Chicago (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/us/elections/chicago-mayor-election-brandon-johnson.html), we can expect more resorting in the middle of the country. A majority of the closely-divided city electorate chose a higher-tax, less-policing candidate backed by most of the powerful public-employee unions. On top of the immediate worries that conservative Chicagoans might have, there’s the ongoing pensions deficit that the city, Cook County and the state of Illinois (also dominated by Democrats of the left) are running, which is a lien on taxpayers who hang around.

Unless attempts succeed to garnish the higher income of fleeing residents (moves under consideration in a few states), or a bailout from Washington is forthcoming, Illinoisans-in-place are squarely under this cloud. So the movement into “two Americas” can expect another rush. I don’t know whether this pace and degree of separation is unprecedented (obviously blacks had reason to escape the Antebellum and Jim Crow South) or necessarily harmful on balance in such an already-sundered society, but it is happening nonetheless.

This piece first appeared on Tim W. Ferguson blog.

Tim W. Ferguson, the former editor of Forbes’s Asia edition, writes about business, economics and society.

Domestic Migration Map

New Geography — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 17:26:19 -0400

Domestic migration has accelerated in the past few years as Americans relocate — typically from larger urban areas to mid-sized and smaller metros. Whether this trend ultimately will reshape parts of America by voting with their feet and moving and reduce the polarization between red and blue states remains to be seen.

See a U.S. map using relocation data, from Allied Van Lines: visit the interactive map.

AEI's Ed Pinto on the Housing Reshufflling and Remote Work

Wendell Cox — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 11:41:06 -0400

Fortune recently published an interview with Ed Pinto, director of the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center, and former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae.

In the interview, Pinto tells Fortune’s Shawn Tully that the high end prices have increased in price as at least as much as medium to high portion of the market. This is unusual, but not so unusual is the fact that prices of high end housing are increasing faster than the low end of the market, which typically experiences the biggest price increases.

Pinto attributes this to “The work from home economy” that has “unleashed people who before the pandemic were tied to jobs in expensive coastal metros and empowered them to move to cities where they can get a lot more house for the same or in most cases less money.”

Pinto describes the United States as having two housing markets, the coasts and the interior. About a quarter of the population lives in the coastal market, where house prices average seven times income, according to Pinto. In the interior, on the other hand, house prices are 3.5 times incomes. Pinto says: “That opens a high-pressure dynamic that’s pushing people to move to where housing is more plentiful and a lot cheaper.”

He notes that restrictions on new house building have forced people in metros like Los Angeles and Seattle “to pay ever higher prices for a relatively small, aging pool of homes.

He cites migration increases to the usual domestic migration magnets like Austin and Raleigh, but notes big increases in less likely metros such as places like Pittsburgh and Columbus. Moreover, he cites local moves away from urban cores to peripheral locations in California, observing an equally strong trend from “downtown rentals” to “roomy homes” far out of town.

Read the complete article at: fortune.com

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

The Way You Move: Author Joel Kotkin on Migration Trends and the Future of CIties

New Geography — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 14:28:20 -0400

Joel Kotkin joins Spencer Levy on The Weekly Take to discuss current migration trends and the future of cities.

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Related:

The Death of the American City

Why More Americans Should Leave Home and Move to Other States

Bloomberg's Case for Moving to Houston, URI 2020 Year in Review Video, and more

Tory Gattis — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 11:53:21 -0500

Happy new year everyone. Hope you enjoyed the holidays and the recent amazing weather (while staying safe). A lot of you probably had out-of-town family and/or friends visiting. Next time nonlocal friends or family say Houston is too hot, floods too often, or gets too many hurricanes, here's my recommended reaction: politely agree with them that Houston is not a city for the soft or irresilient - they should probably choose somewhere like California. Texas welcomes the tough.

The big item this week is Bloomberg Businessweek's "The Case for Moving to Houston" graphic from a recent cover story on high-tech workers leaving the big expensive coastal cities. Click to enlarge, but note Houston in the upper-left pole position of the best bang for your buck, a combination of high average salaries and low cost of living, reinforcing my ongoing argument that Houston has the highest standard of living among major metros in the US and probably the world as well.

The article also has a couple of nice excerpts:

"Consider Phyllis Njoroge, who grew up in Massachusetts. After graduating from Tufts University in 2019 with a degree in cognitive and brain science, she started making spreadsheets of places in the U.S. that had a warm climate, were diverse, and had a reasonable cost of living. Houston won out, and she moved there in March"

Having more remote workers means “wages in Texas are going up,” he says. So are housing prices. “You can’t have a $2 million, 2,000-square-foot house in San Francisco and a $200,000 house in Dallas that are basically the same for very long when there are airplanes and internet connections and Zoom.”

Moving on to some smaller items this week:

New Geography: Texas is the fastest growing state + California loses 70,000 residents in the last year
Houston the 2nd-youngest city in the U.S. behind Salt Lake City (The Mormons have us beat when it comes to cranking out kids, lol ;-)
Houston Chronicle: When COVID trapped me in Houston, I stopped wanting to escape (non paywall link). Hat tip George.
And a similar one: “You’re from Houston? I’m so sorry.” Also hat tip to George.

"I simply say, “no, please don’t be sorry. I love living in Houston. It’s a great place to live and I have a great life there. It’s actually not that place that you might imagine it to be. In fact, it’s one of the country’s most ethnically diverse and progressive cities. My children go to school with kids from all over the world. And the wine and food scene there is great, too.”

Finally, I'd like to end with a great year-end review 1m video our President Charles Blain put together on the Urban Reform Institute - Center for Opportunity Urbanism's work, events, and publications in 2020. Here's to 2021 being even better for our growth and impact!

This piece first appeared at Houston Strategies Blog

Tory Gattis is a Founding Senior Fellow with the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute – A Center for Opportunity Urbanism, and writes the Houston Strategies blog.

California Loses 70,000 Residents 2019 to 2020

Wendell Cox — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 12:25:45 -0500

The Census Bureau has just published its 2020 state population estimates, which indicate that the state that has led growth in the United States for the last 170 years lost 70,000 residents last year. For the first five years of the decade, California had gained 300,000 residents, with a total gain over the period of 1.6 million. Since 2015, California’s population gain plummeted, reaching virtually zero in 2019 and the loss in 2020 (Figure 1). At the same time, the Census Bureau restated California’s 2018 to 2019 population change, which had been shown as a gain of 51,000 last year to a gain of only 147.

This may be California’s first annual population loss since statehood (1850). According to Census Bureau data reported by macrotrends.net, California had gained population in every year since 1900. Earlier annual data was not found.

National Trends

Overall, the national population growth rate has been falling throughout the decade. In 2011, the nation added 0.73% to its population, and fell to 0.35% in 2020. In 2019, the gain was 0.46%. The smaller gain in 2020 is likely attributable to the generally downward trend and smaller international migration flows in the COVID environment.

Over the past year, the South has accounted for 85% of the nation’s growth, adding nearly 1,000,000 residents. The West had 30% of the growth (350,000). The Midwest experienced a modest loss (20,000), while the Northeast lost more than 150,000 residents (Figure 2).

Fastest Gainers

Texas added the largest number of residents in the last year, at 374,000. Florida was second, at 241,000 and Arizona was third at 130,000 (Figure 3). Among the top ten states, six were from the South and the other four from the Intermountain West. The five Pacific Coast states added about 25,000 residents, with an 80,000 gain in Washington and 25,000 in Oregon, which was nearly offset by losses in California, Hawaii and Alaska.

The largest percentage gain was in Idaho, which added 2.11% between 2019 and 2020. Arizona, Nevada and Utah all gained more than 1.40%. Texas ranked 5th, while Florida placed 7th (Figure 4).

Fastest Losers

By far the largest losses were in New York (minus 126,000), Illinois (minus 79,000) and California (minus 70,000). Sixteen states had population losses (Figure 5). New York had the largest percentage loss from 2019 to 2020, at 0.65%. The largest percentage losses were in Illinois, Hawaii and West Virginia, all had losses exceeding 0.55%. California had the 10th largest percentage loss, at 0.18% (Figure 6).

As was the case in 2010, this year’s estimates did not include migration data, unlike the earlier years in the decade.

The 2020 estimates will be superseded by the 2020 Census counts, which will be released in the near future.

The table below shows the 2010 Census as well as the 2019 and 2020 population estimates.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Photograph: Great Seal of the State of California via Wikimedia.

2020 Population Estimates

	2010 Census	2019 Estimate	2020 Estimate	2019-20 #	2019-20 %
United States	309,327,143	328,329,953	329,484,123	1,154,170	0.35%

Alabama	4,785,514	4,907,965	4,921,532	13,567	0.28%
Alaska	713,982	733,603	731,158	(2,445)	-0.33%
Arizona	6,407,342	7,291,843	7,421,401	129,558	1.78%
Arkansas	2,921,998	3,020,985	3,030,522	9,537	0.32%
California	37,319,550	39,437,610	39,368,078	(69,532)	-0.18%
Colorado	5,047,539	5,758,486	5,807,719	49,233	0.85%
Connecticut	3,579,173	3,566,022	3,557,006	(9,016)	-0.25%
Delaware	899,647	976,668	986,809	10,141	1.04%
District of Columbia	605,282	708,253	712,816	4,563	0.64%
Florida	18,846,143	21,492,056	21,733,312	241,256	1.12%
Georgia	9,712,209	10,628,020	10,710,017	81,997	0.77%
Hawaii	1,364,004	1,415,615	1,407,006	(8,609)	-0.61%
Idaho	1,570,819	1,789,060	1,826,913	37,853	2.12%
Illinois	12,840,545	12,667,017	12,587,530	(79,487)	-0.63%
Indiana	6,490,555	6,731,010	6,754,953	23,943	0.36%
Iowa	3,050,819	3,159,596	3,163,561	3,965	0.13%
Kansas	2,858,266	2,912,635	2,913,805	1,170	0.04%
Kentucky	4,348,464	4,472,345	4,477,251	4,906	0.11%
Louisiana	4,544,635	4,658,285	4,645,318	(12,967)	-0.28%
Maine	1,327,651	1,345,770	1,350,141	4,371	0.32%
Maryland	5,788,784	6,054,954	6,055,802	848	0.01%
Massachusetts	6,566,440	6,894,883	6,893,574	(1,309)	-0.02%
Michigan	9,877,597	9,984,795	9,966,555	(18,240)	-0.18%
Minnesota	5,310,934	5,640,053	5,657,342	17,289	0.31%
Mississippi	2,970,615	2,978,227	2,966,786	(11,441)	-0.38%
Missouri	5,996,089	6,140,475	6,151,548	11,073	0.18%
Montana	990,730	1,070,123	1,080,577	10,454	0.98%
Nebraska	1,829,591	1,932,571	1,937,552	4,981	0.26%
Nevada	2,702,483	3,090,771	3,138,259	47,488	1.54%
New Hampshire	1,316,807	1,360,783	1,366,275	5,492	0.40%
New Jersey	8,799,451	8,891,258	8,882,371	(8,887)	-0.10%
New Mexico	2,064,614	2,099,634	2,106,319	6,685	0.32%
New York	19,399,956	19,463,131	19,336,776	(126,355)	-0.65%
North Carolina	9,574,586	10,501,384	10,600,823	99,439	0.95%
North Dakota	674,752	763,724	765,309	1,585	0.21%
Ohio	11,539,449	11,696,507	11,693,217	(3,290)	-0.03%
Oklahoma	3,760,014	3,960,676	3,980,783	20,107	0.51%
Oregon	3,837,614	4,216,116	4,241,507	25,391	0.60%
Pennsylvania	12,711,406	12,798,883	12,783,254	(15,629)	-0.12%
Rhode Island	1,053,994	1,058,158	1,057,125	(1,033)	-0.10%
South Carolina	4,635,846	5,157,702	5,218,040	60,338	1.17%
South Dakota	816,193	887,127	892,717	5,590	0.63%
Tennessee	6,355,518	6,830,325	6,886,834	56,509	0.83%
Texas	25,241,897	28,986,794	29,360,759	373,965	1.29%
Utah	2,775,413	3,203,383	3,249,879	46,496	1.45%
Vermont	625,886	624,046	623,347	(699)	-0.11%
Virginia	8,024,004	8,556,642	8,590,563	33,921	0.40%
Washington	6,743,009	7,614,024	7,693,612	79,588	1.05%
West Virginia	1,854,265	1,795,263	1,784,787	(10,476)	-0.58%
Wisconsin	5,690,538	5,824,581	5,832,655	8,074	0.14%
Wyoming	564,531	580,116	582,328	2,212	0.38%
Source: US Census Bureau

Big City Talent Markets Were Getting Hit Pre-Pandemic

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 17:08:04 -0500

One impact of the coronavirus has been to accelerate some trends that were already present in the marketplace beforehand. One of these has been the accelerating flow of people into new talent magnet communities and the relative stagnation of some of the larger, established coastal cities.

This is evident in the new Talent Attraction Scorecard 2020 from EMSI, which largely draws on data up through 2019. They find states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona having many of the most robust talent attraction markets as ranked based on a basket of measuring including migration, job growth, and new job openings.

Among counties with a population greater than 100,000, Maricopa, AZ (Phoenix) and Clark, NV (Las Vegas) finished at the top. There were four Texas suburban counties in the top 10, and there were 12 counties in Florida in the top 40.

Many of the winners were mid-sized, suburban counties, though some more urban counties like Fulton, GA (Atlanta) have surged in the rankings.

Again, this is based on pre-coronavirus data. It confirms that the performance of America’s largest superstar city markets had fallen off towards the end of the decade. With the economic and demographic fallout from the coronavirus hitting these markets hard, these places look likely to stay at the bottom of the charts for at least the near-term future.

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He focuses on urban, economic development and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in many publications, including the The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.