State to State Migration

There are two primary government sources of data for information on where Americans are moving and which ones are doing the moving.  One is the Census Bureau which uses survey data, so is dependent on good sampling and accurate responses.  The other is revenue departments, including the IRS, but not everyone files tax returns.  This does, however, allow for movement of taxable income, which is important.  Private data sources also can be used to track relocations, such as credit bureau information.  In general, there has been a massive movement of people from certain states, for some reason, all governed by Dems and generally with high taxes (wonder if that could be the explanation) to other states with low or no state income taxes, all governed by Reps.

The 2022 Census Bureau data was released recently.  About 8 million Americans moved in that year, according to this survey data.  Florida and Texas alone each had an inflow of about 8.5% of those movers.  California accounted for almost 10% of outflows, with New York and Illinois also notable.  How about my supposedly wonderful home state of Minnesota?  We have a population of 5,654,602 people according to these numbers.  About 117,000 of those residents lived in a different state in 2021.  18,000 came from Wisconsin, 11,000 from North Dakota, 7000 from Illinois and California each, 6000 from Texas and a masochistic 4500 from Florida.

On the other side of the ledger, 19,000 Minnesotans went to Wisconsin, 13,000 to North Dakota, 7,000 to South Dakota, and 5000 to Iowa.  Minnesota had a net loss of residents to every neighboring state.  We also lost 9000 people to Florida, 9500 to Texas, 5000 to Colorado and for some bizarre reason, 5000 Minnesotans moved to each of Washington and California.  In reality, I assume many moves are job or family related, but a total of 131000 Minnesotans left the state, so we lost a net 14,000 residents.  And other data shows that these aren’t old people, it is younger people in the prime of their working careers.

We also added over 25,000 residents from abroad.  So there was a small net population gain, all driven by Somalis and other immigrants.  People who have lived here for a while are bailing in increasing numbers and largely going to our neighboring states, which are safer, have lower taxes and better education, or to the truly free states of Texas and Florida.  Not a good picture for Minnesota but about what I would expect with the truly horrendous government led by Little Timmy Walz.