Economy Alters How Americans Are Moving

[alp227]

Source: NYT

The continuing economic downturn has drastically altered the internal migration habits of Americans, turning the flood of migrants into the Sun Belt and out of states like New York, Massachusetts and California into a relative trickle, an analysis of recent federal data confirms.

Essentially, millions of Americans have become frozen in place, researchers say, unable to sell their homes and unsure they would find jobs elsewhere anyway.

An analysis of new data from the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire confirms earlier census assessments of a migration slowdown, but also offers a deeper, state-by-state look at the impact of this shift, which upends, however temporarily, a migration over decades from the snowy North to the sunny South.

The institute’s study compared three years’ worth of data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which was released early Thursday and covered 2008-10, with the data from 2005-7. Since the survey’s findings are released in three-year increments, this was the first time that researchers had a set of data that included only years since the financial collapse began, allowing them to make a direct comparison to a similar period before the collapse.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/us/americans-migration-patterns-shifting.html

[Stumbler]

1. Well, yeah...

We're holding onto what we have, if we can and few of us can afford the additional costs associated with moving. Though I do wonder if there's an effect of limited state-spending found in such sun-belt states that may be making them less appealing than their low-taxes policies.