
Migration trends in U.S. metro areas - Jerry2
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-14/chicago-exodus-sees-city-shrink-by-156-daily-demographic-trends
======
mc32
This article is light on details but I think this is as close as it comes to
telling us why:

"Soaring home prices and high local taxes are pushing local residents out and
scaring off potential movers from other parts of the country."

It would make sense that as other parts of the country build out their
attraction for talent, that talent is being syphoned away from high cost areas
to lower cost areas with similar benefits but higher satisfaction, be it
housing affordability, access to education, return on tax investment, etc.

In other words, once tech becomes mainstream outside the tech hotbeds, these
surging regions will begin to attract that talent which may not be happy about
costs, [primary] education, etc., if they can now make a good living in other
areas too.

~~~
vmchale
> will begin to attract that talent which may not be happy about costs,
> education

I don't think it's obvious that some of these areas will be able to provide
the same quality education.

~~~
barry-cotter
It’s not about the quality of education. The educational institutes post date
the industry cluster. Paris was a centre of fashion before fashion was studied
in universities, ditto Nee York. Los Angeles was the place for movies in the
states for three or four decades before film schools existed. New York was the
home of American finance long before commerce or finance were more university
centred than apprenticeship, if that’s even true now.

Agglomeration economies of expertise lead to large, deep labour markets. I
doubt California is much behind Boston in biotech research but the industry is
all in the BosWash corridor, mostly near Boston.

~~~
mc32
Not Cal as a whole, but SSF is second only to Boston in biotech holding
roughly 80% of Cal bioscience tech cos.

------
Trisell
Boise is a prime example of political refugees running to a place because they
love the current policies. And then voting in people who enacted the types of
policies that they ran away from. The district I live in went completely
Democrat for the first time in its history.

It’s also making house unaffordable. My small 1100 sq ft house has appreciated
almost 60% in 4 years. I couldn’t afford to move into something bigger even if
I wanted to.

Oh and traffic that’s getting fun because our city planners are about 10 years
behind on city planning.

But it’s still better then San Francisco or LA. And our crime rate is still
super low...For now.

~~~
skh
Are you sure they run there because they love the current policies? Do you
know that they didn’t move there in spite of the current policies? The housing
policy that is causing a lot of distortion in California was enacted decades
ago. The people migrating to Boise aren’t old folks are they? People younger
than 50 didn’t have much to do with the famous property tax proposition in
California.

~~~
Trisell
Most of them are under 45 I would say. Most I talk to are coming here running
from either California’s political policies(guns, taxes) or Portland because
it got to weird and crime is to high. We have some of the lowest metro crime
rates in the US. So that’s a big draw to.

But Boise is definitely moving blue. Which is what’s cause the rub between the
people who have lived here and those moving in. Even though a lot of people
see Idaho as a backwards messed up state(and trust me it is in a lot of ways).
The people who have been here outside of the last 5 years when it has exploded
are pretty resentful of the growth.

For all of these issues it’s still a wonderful place to live. But that might
change in the next 10 years.

~~~
r00fus
Is it moving blue or have the GOP just moved deeper (crazy) red?

Maybe “blue” really means they’re more left-libertarian and don’t feel the GOP
is a sane choice?

------
throwaway98121
Any place with career opportunities means exorbitant housing costs and other
taxes. Regardless of your politics, there’s a real wealth disparity, and
increased demand is only driving up costs.

I don’t know what the solution is, but the first step is acknowledging the
problem.

~~~
barry-cotter
There’s no engineering reason hosing in these areas can’t grow as fast as
jobs. Tokyo’s population has tripled over the last twenty years while rent has
been pretty much flat.

Seattle has produced way more hosing lately and house prices have crashed.
[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/why-are-
se...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/why-are-seattle-area-
home-prices-falling-now-sorting-out-the-myths-and-the-facts/)

~~~
jpatokal
> Tokyo’s population has tripled over the last twenty years

No, it hasn't? Tokyo's already an anomaly in shrinking Japan by staying
roughly the same size, and last I checked it was also forecast to start losing
people around 2020.

[http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.ht...](http://www.metro.tokyo.jp/ENGLISH/ABOUT/HISTORY/history03.htm)

~~~
barry-cotter
You’re right. I’m wrong. Tokyo has grown by 3m people in the last 20 years. It
has not tripled. It’s increased by ~10%.

------
TomMckenny
>Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, the three areas with a triple-digit daily
exodus

Yet those cities showed continuous rise in housing costs over the same period.
Example: LA housing costs rose roughly 7% in the period it lost roughly
100,000 residents

> Honolulu, San Jose, New York and Bridgeport, CT lost the highest shares of
> their residents to other parts of the country.

Yet San Jose housing costs have risen 16% in the last year.

And I note even Flint Michigan has had a 9% cost increase over the last year.

What could possibly explain this?

~~~
rcpt
Land speculation, majority low income people leaving, interest rate
adjustments

~~~
smelendez
Relatedly, families with children being replaced by young professionals.

Imagine a lower middle class family of five, two working parents and three
kids, in a 3-bedroom place. They get priced out and are replaced by three
upper middle class engineers with no kids, sharing an apartment.

------
unionemployee
The scariest thing about Texas growth to me is the insane sprawl that seems to
go unchecked in the state. Massive roads lined with gas stations, chain
restaurants and big box stores, surrounded by cheaply built homes with four
cars in the driveway/garage, just everywhere. It makes me want to leave the
country.

~~~
ars
That sounds amazing, I might want to move.

Why does it bother you how other people want to live? Not everyone wants to
live in an Arcology. If you want to, then go for it but let other people live
as they want.

~~~
rcpt
Are you in Europe or something? Just about every city in the United States is
surrounded by single family homes and freeways with the same chain stores
repeated every few miles. It's really hard to not find what you're looking
for.

~~~
unionemployee
It isn’t. Your footprint becomes much smaller once you get out of your car.
There are walkable/bikable areas all over the place that are livable, but they
may not stand out if one isn’t looking for them.

------
wharnal
Title is misleading--the article only discusses metro areas. I'm interested in
seeing the stats within city limits.

~~~
dajohnson89
Census data, which _might_ form a part of the data used for this article,
typically includes a proper superset of the city limit.

e.g., for NYC:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Met...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Metropolitan_Statistical_Area)

------
zuminator
Arguably LA, Chicago and NYC are fairly saturated metro areas already, and for
them to be experiencing outmigration is a desirable safety valve. What's not
being shown here is whether there's an actual net population loss in these
regions. If there is, I suspect it's minimal.

~~~
barry-cotter
This is insane. Any of these cities could fit 25m within city limits if they
just upzoned. Shanghai has 25m and half the municipality is farmland or two or
three story buildings.

~~~
max76
It would require more than just upzoning to increase the population of a city
to 25m. NYC's subway, for example, would need significant improvements to
support that kind of population.

~~~
philsnow
The tax base grows with population growth. The advantages of subways and other
mass transit are strongest with denser populations.

------
hitsthings
"fleeing" is quite emotional, but given that this excludes natural growth, I
don't see what's surprising or bad here. Crowded places need a constant flow
of people leaving to avoid overcrowding. What do the numbers look like when
births are included?

------
rayiner
I suspect you’ll see more of this as legacy public sector structures force
taxes to go up in these cities. Texas is great. Low cost housing, low taxes,
good schools. You can be a regular person in these cities and buy a house with
a pool in a decent school district.

~~~
csnewb
I'm a Bay Area resident but visited Austin for the first time over the
weekend. It's an amazing city, but the locals were openly unhappy about any
more Californians moving there. Seems like there's already a big ex-CA
population.

~~~
caseysoftware
Longtime Austin resident, frequent Bay Area visitor here..

Yes, the problem we run into with people from California is that they move
here and immediately start trying to create similar policies they left.

It was the local left (backed my Mayor Adler, local Hillary organizer) that
banned Uber & Lyft, have raised property taxes to the legal maximum every
year, pushed for a state income tax, and many other things.

My property taxes are 1/2 of my mortgage payment now and only going higher.
While I can adjust and make due, it's pushing out more and more of the people
who make Austin great.

~~~
tzs
> It was the local left (backed my Mayor Adler, local Hillary organizer) that
> banned Uber & Lyft

When were Uber and Lyft banned? I recall when they left because they did not
want to comply with driver fingerprinting requirements, but don't recall any
ban.

~~~
muzz
Also, Uber and Lyft began and are headquartered in literally the most leftist
city in the country, San Francisco. The notion that "leftists" don't want Lyft
or Uber seems odd.

~~~
akiselev
"The left" is a broad group with many different ideologies. I don't think ride
share companies that flaunting regulations to even be a left vs right issue.
It's more entrenched encumbent/rule of law vs anti-regulation/technocracy
which doesn't fall into any neat categories.

------
1024core
This does not seem to account for retirement. I bet that most of the people
moving to Phoenix, for example, are retirees. Why would you want to retire in
the snow in NY? Plus, the taxes in NY are much more than in Phoenix or
Florida.

~~~
mc32
Do you expect an upsurge in retirement? Otherwise it should be a pretty steady
rate, year-to-year, no, unless major companies with major layoffs favoring
seniors happened in those regions this year...

~~~
1986
The boomer generation is retiring now, no?

~~~
mc32
Yes, but they all didn't grow up in three main regions, nor during a narrow
time window. In other words, if this were solely due to retirement, I'd expect
to see a more gradual increase and in more places.

~~~
B0btheBuilder
Considering that NYC, Chicago, and LA are the three biggest cities in the
country, I would say, yes, quite a few of them grew up in these regions. If
anything, boomers would be the only generation that could afford living
comfortably in said regions.

~~~
mc32
Yeah but parent said "now", and I would not expect a big jump. You may be
including retiring "now" \+ already retired [who no longer want to or can
afford those places and also are moving].

~~~
1986
Yeah, to be clear, I don't think this is the only contributor - I'd imagine
taxes and cost of living definitely have an impact, among others. I do think
some of these factors might work in concert too though - it's not difficult to
envision people entering retirement, who own their abode in gentrifying areas
and have seen property values (and taxes) go up, deciding to sell and see that
money go further in a lower-cost-of-living area.

------
niftich
It'd be useful to study the pairwise origin and destination of the domestic
moves. That would lend insight into whether the gains posted by Sunbelt metros
are largely of the rural-to-urban nature (or small metro to large metro, but
still nearby), or whether most domestic arrivals are coming from places
further away, from other regions of the country.

After all, the former kind is the usual urban concentration we've seen for a
while, while the latter might be indicative of broader demographic trends like
the Great Northward Migration, or the first Sunbelt Boom.

------
allengeorge
A couple of things are unclear from the article (for NYC specifically, and,
more generally):

1\. Does NYC still lose people after accounting for the effects of
international migrant inflows?

2\. What are the education levels of the people leaving the city?

3\. Are they referring to the city only, or the metro area (which, IIRC, can
stretch into Westchester and parts of Jersey)?

~~~
Nelkins
For NYC, it appears the city is growing when considering international
migration (subject to various caveats about quality of data). More detailed
information can be found here: [https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-
maps/nyc-population/...](https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/data-maps/nyc-
population/current-future-populations.page)

------
cenal
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was engineered to do this.

Punish blue state earners with higher taxes. These folks flee into red states
and hopefully bring some jobs with them.

~~~
maccio92
Punish in this context means reduce the amount of state taxes they can deduct
from federal taxes - in effect increasing their tax rate. Isn't it
predominantly "blue" people asking for more taxes for more social programs?
Sounds like they got what they were asking for..

~~~
akhilcacharya
Pray tell, what social programs did they get for this? The tax bill was barely
paid for.

Not to mention that affluent blue states already pay more net to the federal
government than they get back in services.

~~~
maccio92
This is the one I'm most excited about
[https://eig.org/opportunityzones](https://eig.org/opportunityzones)

~~~
1986
Describing a tax incentive for private capital as a "social program" stretches
the bounds of credulity.

Furthermore, speaking as a resident of one of the designated "opportunity
zones", it's already full of luxury condo developments.

