Growth is in red states

 City Journal:

It’s instructive to observe where Americans are moving, and where they are leaving. Such comparisons are particularly revealing when made during, or immediately following, a crisis, such as the recent Covid-19 pandemic. States dealt with that crisis quite differently. Movement statistics from recent years help to establish which of the 50 “laboratories of democracy” responded best to the pandemic.

The Census Bureau publishes annual data on each state’s net domestic migration—that is, how many U.S. residents have moved to a given state, minus the number who moved from that state to elsewhere in the U.S. The second quarter of 2020 (from April 1 to June 30 of that year) was the first quarter to take place entirely after Covid-19 was known to have hit our shores; the most recent statistics available are from July 1, 2023. Looking at net domestic migration over that 13-quarter span yields some interesting results—and some clear winners and losers.

Among large states (those with a population above the 50-state average), the net-domestic-migration winner over the 13-quarter period after Covid-19’s arrival was Florida. The Sunshine State added a net tally of 819,000 Americans over that span. To put that into perspective, in just three years and change, Florida added more people from net domestic migration than the combined populations of Miami and Orlando. The large-state runner-up: Texas. It added 80 percent as many people as Florida (656,000).

The state that lost the most was California, which shed 1.2 million people through net domestic outmigration—the rough equivalent of San Francisco and Oakland’s combined populations. The runner-up loser was New York, which lost about three-quarters as many people as California.

These trends have kept up over the most recent 12 months of this three-year-plus stretch (from mid-2022 to mid-2023, the most recent statistics available). In that period, Florida remains first, Texas second, New York 49th, and California 50th. Apparently, the once-popular song “California, Here I Come” has given way to “Movin’ Out.”

Among small states over the three-plus years in question, South Carolina (248,000 people) led in net domestic migration, followed by Idaho (up 104,000). The biggest small-state loser in that span was Louisiana (down 111,000), followed closely by Maryland (down 100,000).

States’ pandemic policies doubtless played a role in these results. The two large states and two small states that fared best in these comparisons were among those with the least onerous Covid-19 mandates. The two large states and two small states that fared worst were among the states that imposed the most onerous pandemic mandates, with California and New York leading the way in that dubious category.
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States with the most freedom were the biggest winners in population growth and the states with the most onerous response to Covid were the big losers.  The freedom states also appear to have survived the pandemic as well if not better than the restrictive states. 

See also:

Florida Has Nearly 800k More Registered Republicans than Democrats