As 2020 was a serious outlier I am sticking with U.S. states by net domestic migration (From July 1, 2018 to July 1, 2019):
Net domestic migration rate per 1,000 inhabitants: Alaska −12.96, Hawaii −9.76, New York −9.29, Illinois −8.28, Connecticut −6.19, Louisiana −5.60, New Jersey −5.51, California −5.15, skipping several places Delaware 7.15, South Carolina 10.30, Arizona 12.50, Nevada 14.03, Idaho 15.31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
It’s the territories that are seeing the fastest changes. American Samoa –26.1, Guam –11.0, Northern Mariana Islands –15.4, Puerto Rico –14.1, U.S. Virgin Islands –7.5
It’s not that an overwhelming percentage of people leaving recently moved in, but they do represent a larger percentage of people moving out which is normal.
Eureka is charming enough, but it has no specific attractive force over any other (very) small coastal city where the next-larger city is many hours' drive away. Compare to Crescent City, or southern coastal Oregon.
So yes, you're still in California up there, and housing is less expensive. But there are no jobs (WFH tide floats all boats), and it isn't the California that most people are looking for. See also: Bakersfield.
Sure beats Crescent City though.
But for every buck you save, you lose an hour of your life to our terrible transportation infrastructure. Twice the house, four times the drive. It's why the housing price equation is as unbalanced as it is here.
What does Eureka have (appart for nice nature)? How much does one has to drive to go to an airport that can fly directly to Europe or Asia? If your local business closed, how long and how much would you have to drive to find another job?
Commanding a mid-level metro prices, without the economy vibrancy of one, is sheer overpricing. And maybe that's why so many locals are leaving. (the influx is usually immigrants, which are more willing to put up with crappier conditions).
And you're right, maybe Raleigh is a better choice. Or maybe Minneapolis. Or perhaps Boise, or any number of other mid-size capitol cities. But they aren't California.
The opportunities available in Eureka are not the same ones available in the Bay Area (although it's likely gotten better). I suspect they don't even stack up to Raleigh favorably. Eureka is much smaller than many bay area cities, and more importantly, is isolated, so it feels much smaller than even the ones that it is similarly sized to, as once you leave Eureka, you're not immediately entering another city of the same or larger size.
In fact 500,000 of them without health insurance are looking encouragingly at a possible medicaid expansion 11 years after the ACA passed.
CA is overpriced by a long shot
(In fact Eureka is fairly centrally located on the coast, which is kind of cool, too. I’d want to live in Arcata instead because less tweakers. But Arcata isn’t directly on the coast, so you can’t really compare them)
As for the populace... they don't call it Eutweaka for nothin
Eureka can be overpriced while the overall thesis remains carefully constructed malarkey. NC has grown by 300% in the last century while CA has grown by 900% in the same period. More recently NC has grown at about 1% per year over the last decade. California grew similarly over the same period until 2016 when it started to slow down. Its barely a blip in the graph and needs no complicated explanation.
They must have started renting that house at least 10 years ago and had a landlord who never rose the price. Because rental prices for large houses are $2000+ (Eureka/Arcata) or $1800+ (McKinnleyville) now.
However, if you ever talk to uber drivers or your waiters they will complain about how expensive California is. Or even people at parties who are in between jobs and thinking of moving to where they grew up. I guess in real life I just hear more people talk about the general cost of living argument than a than the specific anti-tech one.
I hear the opposite, people cannot afford where they grew up. Most people from the Bay Area aren’t working high paying tech jobs.
> I guess in real life I just hear more people talk about the general cost of living argument than a than the specific anti-tech one.
Anti-tech sentiment peaked in the early 2010s. Tech buses stopped being vandalized and the “die techie scum” thing mostly went away after 2015.
While we're comparing anecdotal evidence, I live in Los Angeles and count among my peers many who work in the Hollywood/Media industry. I can assure you the general sentiment among them toward Big Tech is overwhelmingly negative. I work in tech (albeit not a large company) and even I tend to agree.
Also to be quite honest software engineers aren't as smart or nerdy as they think they are in general. Very arrogant and egotistical, though, for sure.
And almost by definition, if you move to California from somewhere else then "home" would be lower cost of living. Only exceptions are if you grew up in NYC, Boston, DC or a few other cities.
Lots of California is cheaper than a lot more than just the few most expensive cities. California is not just the central cities of the Bag Area. Also, on a state level, HI has a higher cost of living than CA.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/most-expens...
Everyone knows that California is not just LA and SF. But also Florida isn't just Tampa/Miami and Arizona isn't just Phoenix.
The big cities in CA are more expensive than the big cities in other states. The rural areas in CA are more expensive than the rural areas in other states.
Pointing out that the rural areas in CA are cheaper than the cities in other states is not compelling.
And for the record, Hawaii is seeing net out-migration too. At least its excuse for low cost of living is the fact that its an island that has to ship everything in.
Indeed, my experience is that there are parts of CA that aren’t significantly more expensive than my Midwestern home state.
The cheapest parts of CA are probably going to be as expensive as right outside a Cleveland or Pittsburgh.
If we're just talking about random middle class (and below) people ability to retire in the same house they've lived in for decades, a few other states may be worse at the moment, e.g. NJ and CT and perhaps others raising property taxes fast. But the days of prop 13 protecting Californians from this same fate may not last forever.
Areas of Washington State like Arlington have seen this as well, it's crazy to see a dated 4 bed 3 bath house go for $800k when it is not within even supercommuting distance of any high paying employees.
Or cash out for a retirement where you aren’t living someplace subject to Prop 13 effect on the market, which is what a lot retirees leaving CA do.
I'm not necessarily in the camp that thinks California isn't worth the cost. Though some undesirable location in the desert may indeed not be worth the taxes.
Since it is a place that people can come to California from, it is a very effective defense against the claim almost by definition, if you move to California from somewhere else then "home" would be lower cost of living.
And pretty much all Hawaiian transplants.
A sampling of average overall salaries for professors:
- UC Berkeley (ie bay area): $214,300
- UCLA: $234,200
- UT San Antonio: $130,900
- UT Dallas: $169,500
So an average Berkeley professor makes more than half again as much as an average UT San Antonio professor. And 25% more than UT Dallas.
In the end I imagine the prof at UTD could easily have more cash at the end of the month than the prof at UC Berkeley.
UTSA is such a small school it really shouldn't even be compared to UC Berkeley or UCLA.
https://www.ucop.edu/loan-programs/loan-programs/frap/index....
It doesn't really say what percentage of professors get this assistance or how much that assistance is typical in the end.
Faculty housing rates at UCLA:
https://portal.housing.ucla.edu/faculty-housing/faculty-hous...
So pretty much >$2k and up to $5,427/mo for housing costs. And that's supposed to be somehow more affordable than the surrounding area? For a 2bdr apartment its >$500/mo more than my mortgage + insurance on a four bedroom home with a pool purchased recently. For the condos, that's a few grand a month more. Compared to $1,400/mo average rent immediately surrounding UTD. Rent can be found for <$850/mo in Richardson, only 42-70% of the cost. And that's without having a small commute and living in a cheaper part of DFW, as Richardson's real estate isn't exactly a cheap part of town.
That would have to be a pretty good-sized stipend to offset that cost. Also it speaks volumes that a professor making >$40k gross more needs to then also have a housing stipend to make the actual take home close to the person making >$40k less.
I remember taking a hard look at some job offers around SF, relocating from DFW. Crunching the numbers I would have needed well more than twice my current salary to have my savings rate be the same and I'd still be downsizing my housing a good bit.
A major issue in looking at the averages at the entire university level like this is that you might be comparing apples to oranges. There are typically three ranks among research professors: assistant, association, and full. These positions can additionally have chairs. The salaries differ considerably across these ranks. Then there are teaching positions which are usually non tenure track. They may also have the same assistant, associate, and full professor positions but their salaries are much lower than the research professors. AAUP appendix has combined all of them into one single category.
Finally, this survey masks the salary differences among different disciplines. In American universities, B-school professors typically earn way more than other disciplines such as pure sciences, psychology, and engineering.
When we do salary comparisons (we have to do it while negotiating a raise), we pick out colleges/schools that are similarly ranked as ours and then we take average salaries of professors at the same position. As I mentioned, the salaries are public so this is possible although quite tedious.
Many many years later I was sitting at the bar at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas eavesdropping on a conversation by a guy who started some kind of sanitation or janitorial business. He was trying to impress a woman that he was talking with, and I distinctly remember him saying he'd be eaten alive if he started the company in California, and that he was thankful for the tax situation in Nevada.
So I don't think this is entirely a myth.
But CA has long invested large amounts in its people (one reason there is U Cal Berkley, which is one reason for the Bay Area's success), which of course requires taxes, and it long has protected its citizens, including the wealthy ones - something the citizens like and vote for.
How does sampling theory support that your two experiences might be a trend? I got two flat tires in the last ten years. Does sampling theory say it's a trend? Statewide? Worldwide?
> it is also important to understand other perspectives
Absolutely, but let's remember that much of the narrative has been pushed by a political faction for years.
I don't run with startup/entrepreneurial types, so for this to come up in the way it has with my limited exposure to these folks, I consider that at least somewhat significant. I am not saying it is definitely a trend. But I do remember from my social science labs that ballpark-accurate statistical inferences can be made from surprisingly small sample sizes if the population sampled is broad enough. Do I just happen to find myself around locationally-anxious ex-Californian business owners? Who knows.
> Absolutely, but let's remember that much of the narrative has been pushed by a political faction for years
Ah yes, politics' icy tendrils (tentacles?) seem to molest everything they come across, and even some things they don't. All I can say is that I am not trying to push a political narrative, and that the people who are should kindly jump off a cliff.
> I am not trying to push a political narrative, and that the people who are should kindly jump off a cliff.
I am not at all saying that you are. I'm saying that the narrative affects the situation. I agree about the cliff!
And again, it must be representative. Should I ask 9 friends of mine?
He doesn't know that because he didn't try it.
There's news articles every year that California "has the worst business environment in the US" or stuff like that, but they're all based on surveys and what they actually mean is business owners are whining in case they get an income tax cut. CA's economy is, of course, doing great, and for the middle class the tax burden is less than Texas if you remember to count taxes other than income tax.
Also, high housing prices are allowing home-owning retirees to cash out and live the part of their life where they don't need to worry about a job quite well elsewhere.
Again small anecdotal data point but take it for what it is worth.
What does that mean?
In fact, I love California so much that I buckled the popular media narrative and moved _from_ Texas _to_ California. Funnily enough, people talk about the California-to-Texas pipeline as if it's a new thing, but it's been an observed phenomenon since at least 2005, and it's a lot smaller than the media would have you think (usually net ~40k year leave CA for TX, with about 80k going to Texas and 40k coming from Texas). That is 0.1% migration.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2021/03/03/californians-mo...