For a number of years, Americans have been moving, on net, from blue states to red states. That trend was accentuated by the coronavirus epidemic, as living in red states was generally a lot more normal, and pleasant, than living in blue states. This chart shows the net migration of income in and out of states during the pandemic. There are no surprises: California, New York, and Illinois were huge losers, and Florida was the overwhelming winner:
Reposting with clarified graph of the states pic.twitter.com/M1ykv8hr18
— Daniel Clifton (@DanCliftonStrat) March 29, 2022
It would be interesting to see the same data presented in per capita terms. The biggest winners and losers were, naturally, the biggest states. My own state, Minnesota, lost something like $2 billion in income. If the data were shown in per capita terms, Minnesota would be one of the biggest losers, although not, to be fair, at the same level as California and New York.
Covid didn’t create a lot of new trends. Mostly, it shook things up and caused people to re-think what they were doing. As a result, it magnified trends that were already in being.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.