14% of Americans Are Considering a Move Out of Their State Due to Current Events | Hacker News Reader

14% of Americans Are Considering a Move Out of Their State Due to Current Events

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45 pointssharkweek64 comments

U-Haul and similar companies have real numbers on how many people are actually moving, which would be a lot more interesting. "Considering" something, is pretty easy. Telling a pollster you're "considering" something, is even easier.

Not that I don't believe the real number has increased; I would not be surprised at all if it has. But "considering" doesn't tell me much.

Agreed.

The survey collected 2,309 responses from US residents 18 years or older.

That is a very tiny sample to get meaningful numbers. The moving companies for sure should have a better picture of trends. It might be a year before we see any numbers though. [1] Perhaps a reporter could call them and ask if they have rough current numbers.

[1] - https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19966/U-Haul-Migration-...

lots of people will tell a pollster they want to move, the number of people who actually do it is the interesting number.

in January 2019, 26% of americans said they were considering moving to Canada [1]. That obviously hasn't happened.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4822460/americans-move-to-canada-...

Moving to a different state or out of a city into the suburbs isn't as drastic as moving to an entirely different country. Nor is it nearly as difficult.

I know numerous people in my home town who are considering moving and have been considering it for decades. I "consider" it every time I see an interesting job posting on LinkedIn.

The bar for consider is very low.

People even tell their friends and, I think, legitimately mean it - for the last 10 years nearly everyone I know in Portland (Ore.) has said they want to move to a smaller city... so far I am the only who has left. And cities keep growing while rural areas keep shrinking.

Actually the largest cities are shrinking, and have been for the last couple year. It will be no doubt be exacerbated by recent events.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/americas-t...

Fair point - my always-angry neighbor routinely talks about how he's leaving the post-apocalyptic hellscape our city has become, but after 10 years of hearing the same song, he's still here. Still angry, but still here.

Does he have a wife?

I want to move but my wife won't let me.

No, not sure if he did at one point though. I'm empathetic to the fact that he's probably angry for reasons I don't know, but it still makes me laugh when he goes on his rants.

I'm probably a younger version of him. I'm miserable because I've lost faith and hope in our systems (corporate, legal, marriage, etc).

Marriage is still a decent system. My wife and I are doing the best we can to keep each other sane through all this.

I mean my personal experience.

Others may have different opinions of these systems based on their experiences.

It’s a shame HN doesn’t allow enough space to include the “Have Moved or” from the actual article title.

> in January 2019, 26% of americans said they were considering moving to Canada [1]. That obviously hasn't happened.

I'm an example of a Canadian moving to America, FWIW.

I think there is a big difference between stated and revealed preferences.

Well just look at the wording - "considering". Probably 99.9% of the things I've considered I've never done.

It's a poorly worded survey question. It would have been more helpful to ask "are you planning on leaving your state in the next 12 months?".

I think it's still a noteworthy development if the number of people who talk about moving is suddenly going up.

Being a lifelong Oregonian, I'd be really curious to know how many of those thinking of leaving originally came from somewhere else, because the last 25 years have seen a huge influx of people moving in from out of state.

I moved to Oregon in 1995 and have no plans of leaving. Where would I go? I think the numbers are inflated by people annoyed by current events (rural OR is very right-wing) but they won't actually go.

I agree. I see similar stuff in PA. The urban vs rural issues exist in most states depending on urbanization rates.

> Where would I go?

What does this even mean? The US has 49 other states to choose from.

It means I think Oregon is so great that I can't imagine going elsewhere. I'm exaggerating only a little bit.

It seems it’s an American pastime to threaten moving to another state or gasp even to another country whenever they don’t like something. Not many follow through. Most of them will be considering for the next few decades.

Sort of surprised to see Florida on there. It always seems like it's a place that people are moving to either for the weather or low taxes. I'm guessing it has to do with tourism being shot this year and a lot of people there not being able to make a living? Possibly this is why Nevada is so high on the list too, via Las Vegas.

Interesting to see NJ and CN having low numbers of people that want to move out. I'm guessing a lot of people that want to leave NYC but stay nearby will be moving into these locations. MA is sort of interesting though being so high on the list. Maybe folks want to move to NH or VT if they don't have to be in Boston?

Oregon, Portland in particular - I mean what can you say about the place now?

Illinois makes sense as Chicago has been on the decline for nearly 50 years now and they refuse to change anything about how they do things. Sad as it's a great city but just refuses to break their corrupt political machine.

I live in Florida and I'm surprised we aren't number 1 on the list. My wife and I have been talking about moving to another state in the future. Our state government's response to the Coronavirus has made it clear where priorities lie. Governor Ron Desantis (now affectionately called Ron DeathSentence) has shown himself to be a Trump lapdog, and the amount of Trump supporters in my county is disheartening.

Low taxes are nice if you are retired, but along with low taxes comes little funding for schools, public infrastructure, a social safety net, etc.

Where would you move?

In addition to a dearth of jobs in many areas, Florida can have deceptively higher costs due to insurance (for sinkholes, hurricanes, bad drivers) and needing to spend a lot on electricity for AC.

That's a good point - always important to consider the total cot of living when comparing things.

I'm not sure there's enough real data here for any sort of conclusion, but it is interesting.

For those that are considering a move strictly based on recent events what's primary driver? Are those that are unhappy with how recent events unfolded(Covid or political unrest) looking to move somewhere that more closely aligns with their views?

As someone in Pennsylvania I've come to terms with the wide political differences across the state. I couldn't imagine calling anywhere else home despite wishing to be in a more progressive environment.

As a Canadian working in Minneapolis, it is very disturbing seeing heavily armed military vehicles on our civilian roadways. There's still some here even now.

It would be really hard to find an American city where this isn't the case. DoD hands out surplus equipment for pennies on the dollar.

I think you mean armored rather than armed. The vehicles are armored but any heavy weaponry has been removed or made inert.

Was it not disturbing to see blocks and blocks of the city burnt to the ground by rioters?

I live in PA and think it's too progressive for me. You'll get your wish for a more progressive environment when the legislature follows the executive branch in turning blue in the next 10 years (once urbanization get close to 85%).

There's definitely some deep cultural divides when comparing some geographic areas to others in the state. Of course this is generally true for rural vs urban areas of most states. Just like the urbanized areas outweighing the rural ones in states that have high urbanization rates.

My family and I are in the Seattle area, we're considering moving due to work going primarily remote, cost of living (childcare is becoming a significant concern for us as we start a family, for example), and disagreement with local politics, probably in that order.

My family and I also live in Seattle and are in the middle of moving for similar reasons (sold my house, bought another one, waiting for everything to close). I probably wouldn't have pulled the trigger, but I have a friend who happens to be a real estate agent, and that made things a lot easier. Still, moving is expensive, a lot of work, and really disruptive! (I'm typing this from a hotel room...)

“Considering”

I dislike the way they lumped “considering or have moved” together. The difference is huge. They should be presented as separate data points and compared with the baseline.

Also

> When compared against publicly available data, states like California and New York with high population cities are seeing a year-over-year increase of people moving to less-dense areas.

So, the rate of this migration is increasing. But how much? How different is it from the baseline.

We don’t know because the article and its narrative, the story it wants to tell is out in front of the data.

There was a bloomberg piece that looked at uhaul data and showed there is a net migration to Texas, florida, vermont, idaho from NY and CA. Something is happening for sure.

Conversely, Curbed took a look at data Zillow published and found the data didn't really match the trend pieces of "everyone is fleeing the city"

https://www.curbed.com/2020/8/31/21404333/suburbs-housing-bo...

There have been net outflows from NY and CA for twenty years.

Even if something is happening, it's not a new something.

Americans are highly mobile. About 15% of the population moves every year. Their core "finding" is nonsense.

Additionally, this survey is terrible. 2,300 people nationwide is plenty to collect national aggregate data, but it tells you nothing about the states -- odds are, aside from texas and california, you won't have a statistically significant sample of the states

I agree that the data is pretty much worthless since it doesn't measure actual population or the reasons. But at the same time, a lot of that 15% who do move are not moving out of state. So I wouldn't list that as a reason.

It would be nice to have a trend or at least prior year baseline of "considering moving" when attributing significance. Some of the west coast ones could have a high baseline as many always consider the possibility of making their money go further elsewhere. (Remote work going very mainstream may inspire them to pull the trigger on it.)

Seems like with only 2309 total respondents (nationwide) that reporting per-state percentages down to the tenth of a percent is not the right handling of significant digits of information. That's an average of fewer than 50 respondents to a yes/no question per-state reported to 1 part in 1000 precision.

Why is Massachusetts #5 on the list? Just coronavirus in general? How would moving help? Is racism worse in Boston than other cities?

If anyone has a guess, let me know.

Maybe since people are working remote, and their kids are going to school on zoom, they are thinking of moving to a state with a lower cost of living? I could see that.

My guess is cost of living. Either between "working remote" while paying city rent prices, or paying real estate taxes for one of the better school districts, I imagine there's a high percentage of residents that don't believe they are getting what they are paying for.

It's interesting that California is right there next to Massachusetts, but New York is further down the list

I wonder if for NY not being as high as CA or MA it's because Long Island is maybe a place people in NYC are considering. So although they want to leave the city they are choosing to stay in the state by virtue of moving to Long Island.

(Cambridge, MA resident). It's expensive and taxes are somewhat high, so if you can keep your same salary and move someplace cheaper now that remote working is suddenly more acceptable, that could be a big enough driver to respond to a poll with "I'm considering moving out".

It's #5 on the list because the survey was badly designed, and the results have no statistical significance at the state level.

(I live in Massachusetts)

1. The appeal of the city is drastically reduced by coronavirus + remote work 2. Boston cost-of-living is really expensive

Put them together and moving to New Hampshire or Vermont starts to seem really attractive. Just compare Zillow for Manchester, NH vs, e.g., Somerville, MA.

Combine with 3. Most MA residents live in Greater Boston, and it's easy to see MA at #5.

Boston's one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in/near, so that's probably a contributor.

I'll point out that small states mean that when you "consider moving" to the suburbs/exurbs, many people are going to be at least "considering" New Hampshire or Rhode Island (possibly even Maine) among their choices if they want to move from the inner Boston metro area to the outer parts of it. Which means answering "yes" to this question regarding you're "considering" moving out of state.

Most of the smaller metro areas in the state are similarly on or near state lines as well, like Springfield and Lowell. Even Worcester is commutable from CT.

What the hell is their cut off for a state to count as significant data? They interviewed 2300 people, with 50 states that's 46 per state, and only nine weren't significant? If one answer can change the result by 2%, that doesn't seem significant enough.

Would have been nice to see where these residents think they will go. Domestically? Internationally?

That doesn't seem all that high. I saw a government figure (Census?) which stayed that 30% of Americans move in a given year.

So about half of those moves being out of state doesn't seem out of line.

This stuff happens in Oregon fairly frequently. Maybe not the actual danger of fire but at least the poor air quality which is the most visible byproduct of the fires by far.

And here I thought buying an expensive house in Portland was a good idea. Great. Anecdotally, I don't know anyone that's left recently.

An expensive house in Portland feels like a relatively affordable compared to what the same money buys in the Bay Area.

What's the baseline of each state though? Pre-covid, what % of the state already considered moving?

So that’s more like a shuffle than moving out

We're considering moving from the US altogether. My family is jewish and made their way to the US during the holocaust. We're ironically using that status to get citizenship and potentially move to Germany or Austria.

Do you mind if I ask what the reasons for the move are?

I grew up in Germany and left in 1992 to come to the US. Since then I heard there's been a steady increase in Jewish population, when I grew up there I didn't know a single Jew. It's interesting because my generation is pretty much defined by trying to make up for the horrors committed by my grandparents' generation but it was more of a theoretical undertaking. Now there seems to be more of a chance for face-to-face reconciliation. THere's still a ton of anti-semitism though.

Where will they go? Every state has its own kind of problems.

Yeah, but those problems affect people differently, making some places more attractive on an individual basis.

For example, if you are a gun owner you would find the laws in places like NJ, NY, and CA to be very problematic. The same way that if you value access to abortion you will find those states less problematic.

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