Florida

Debating Gavin Newsom Will Boost Ron DeSantis

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 20:28:39 -0400

A potential face-off on Fox TV between Florida’s Ron DeSantis and California’s Gavin Newsom may not remind anyone of Lincoln versus Douglas, or even Kennedy and Nixon. But it would mark a huge improvement to a political campaign dominated by two old men who are losing touch with reality.

If not too overwhelmed by cultural issues like parental rights, transgender policy, abortion and censorship, the DeSantis-Newsom debate could provide a useful discussion of America’s national future. Indeed, it could provide a debate over two models of governance: one focused on elite industry dominated by a progressive cultural agenda, and one more amenable to grassroots capitalism coupled with an allegiance to the traditional values of the middle class.

In recent years, the relationship between California and Florida has changed dramatically. For the past century, the Golden State has been the clear winner in cutting-edge industries like technology and entertainment, as well as agriculture and aerospace. In comparison, Florida seemed like a giant nursing home, known for the kind of mindlessness so well portrayed in Carl Hiaasen’s novels.

But Florida is no longer just a joke. Despite DeSantis’s attempt to run as Grand Inquisitor of the “woke”, the on-the-ground reality suggests that Florida makes a more compelling economic model than California. The contrast in performance is truly stunning. Florida is generating many more jobs than its rival state and gaining momentum in tech and other fields. Over the past five years, Florida ranked fifth in job growth and California 37th. US News recently ranked the state 29th in economic strength, behind Florida’s #7 ranking.

Considering that California was once seen as a national exemplar, Newsom should also be made to defend how his state spent billions on green investments, transit, education, and promoting dense development, but ended up with America’s highest poverty rate and a stunning lack of upward mobility.

More important still may be demographic changes. For years, the best, brightest and most energetic headed to California for good reason — great universities, ideal weather, and spectacular scenery. But over the past decade, and even more so after the pandemic, the migration patterns have changed, with Florida — along with Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Arizona — making big gains. Between 2020 and 2022, Florida gained 600,000 migrants, the most of any state, while California haemorrhaged over 800,000 — once again the leader, albeit in the wrong direction.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC 2.0 License. Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom.

Hurricane Hype, Lies, Censorship — and Reality

Paul Driessen — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Hurricane Ian is in the history books, having unleashed its Category 4 fury on southwestern Florida. Even as the area slowly digs out and rebuilds, the devastation and tragedies will linger in reality and memories.

Ian was the latest of 123 hurricanes to hit the Sunshine State since official recordkeeping began in 1851. But not surprisingly, some wasted no time trying to link Ian to the most dominant issue of our time.

Climate change is “rapidly fueling super hurricanes,” a Washington Post headline proclaimed. “I grew up [in Florida] and these storms are intensifying,” CNN’s Don Lemon insisted. Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are making hurricanes “stronger, slower and wetter,” reporter Morgan McFall-Johnsen asserted. They’re becoming more frequent and intense, multiple commentators pronounced.

Ian should have “finally ended” the debate about “whether there’s climate change,” President Biden stated, as he assessed damage along Florida’s Gulf Coast with Governor and First Lady DeSantis.

The newest fear-mongering is slightly more sophisticated. Now hurricanes are gaining strength more rapidly, because of fossil fuels. The phenomenon even has a fancy name: “rapid intensification.”

This clever claim cannot be proven or disproven, because we didn’t have technologies to measure how rapidly certain storms intensified even a few decades ago. But for climate-obsessed White House and Deep State officials, news and social media campaigners, and academic and corporate grant seekers, it’s another incontrovertible truth.
It certainly enhances climate propaganda efforts and advances anti-fossil-fuel, pro-wind-and-solar agendas. But are “rapid intensification” and these other assertions supported by actual evidence?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides an extensive, handy resource: the complete record of all hurricanes that struck the continental United States (made landfall), 1851-2021. It offers fascinating insights, reveals surprising short term and recurrent cycles, but does not provide data to support claims of any recent trends, such as more frequent and intense, or stronger, slower and wetter.

Among its revelations is the sheer number of hurricanes – hundreds of them, many of which struck multiple states before dissipating, returning to pound other unlucky states, or heading back out to sea to maul Caribbean or Atlantic islands. Florida appears to have been hit more often than any other state.

Also surprising is the number of times New York and other Upper Atlantic States got pummeled. “Superstorm” Sandy (2012) was barely a Category 1, but NY State and City have been pounded and inundated by hurricanes as far back as 1869, including two Category 3s, in 1954 and 1985.

Another northernmost cyclone, Fiona (barely a Category 2 when it hit Nova Scotia this September 24), was quickly branded Canada’s “strongest and costliest cyclone on record.” It may have been costly – for the same reason today’s US hurricanes are: extensive, expensive development along coastlines. But the powerful 1775 Newfoundland hurricane caused storm surges up to 30 feet high and killed over 4,000 people; it’s still Canada’s deadliest natural disaster.

Returning to the southernmost USA, Florida was absolutely slammed by five Category 4, two Cat 3, one Cat 2 and four Cat 1 hurricanes in just six years. Thankfully, it was October 1944 through October 1950, before coastal development took off. But the loss of life was still horrific.

Imagine those twelve hurricanes punishing the state’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts today. It could happen.

Florida got bludgeoned again more recently – with one Category 2, one Category 4 and six Category 3 hurricanes hitting it in just 15 months: August 2004-October 2005. Some would call that an upward trend (doubtless due to global warming). However, not a single hurricane of any magnitude hit Florida during the following eleven years. (Was that significant downward trend also due to manmade climate change? Or must we employ liberal double standards again?)

Even more startling, during the nearly twelve years between Wilma (Florida, Category 3, October 2005) and Harvey (Texas, Category 4, August 2017), followed two weeks later by Irma (Florida, Category 4) – not a single Category 3-5 “major” hurricane struck the US mainland, anywhere. That’s an all-time record, surpassing the previous nine-year record, set in 1860-1869.

Equally amazing, the USA didn’t experience a single Category 5 hurricane until 1935. The next three struck in 1969, 1992 and 2018. All but Camille hammered Florida. Either these monsters truly didn’t exist before 1935, or we just couldn’t measure winds speeds above 156 mph until the 1930s.

The NOAA records reveal, and experts like Roger Pielke, Jr. can find, no upward trend in hurricane frequency or intensity. There are cycles of multiple monstrous storms, interspersed with stretches of few or no major hurricanes, or any hurricanes at all. But no discernable trends. (The strength of the epic Nueva Senora de Atocha hurricane of Mel Fisher fame in 1622 is anyone’s guess.)

But because of hyper-hyped hurricanes and other climate crisis fables, we’re supposed to abandon the fossil fuels that are 80% of the energy the United States and world require to sustain our factories, homes, hospitals and living standards; that give us affordable food, strong houses, early warning systems, and vehicles with enough fuel to get us out of harm’s way and rescue people trapped by flood waters.

Michael Bloomberg is now funding an $85 million campaign to end petrochemical manufacturing in the United States! That would force us to do without or import feed stocks for nitrogen fertilizers, makeup, paints, pharmaceuticals, synthetic fiber clothing, and plastics for toys, cars, boats, medical devices, packaging, solar panels – and wind turbine blades and nacelles. Even the frames on the Glock and Springfield pistols that Bloomberg’s private security guards carry are derived from petrochemicals.

(Billionaire Bloomberg also thinks you just drop seeds in the ground, add water, they grow and you eat.)

As to that fossil-fuel-free utopia – how many thousands of wind turbines, millions of solar panels and millions of backup battery modules would Florida alone need to power its economy? How many of them would have survived Ian’s, Andrew’s or Michael’s ferocious winds, floods and storm surges? How many years would it take to replace them afterward? How many EV and backup batteries will spontaneously ignite when they’re immersed in floodwaters, causing unprecedented problems for firefighters?

We can build gas turbines and nuclear power plants to withstand these natural furies – and we wouldn’t need many of them. How do we fortify sprawling “renewable, sustainable” energy systems?

So while you’re filling your gas tank, looking at your grocery bill and reflecting on what’s left of your retirement savings, you may want to listen less to Joe Biden and John Kerry – and more to real experts like Joe D’Aleo, Joe Bastardi, Stanley Goldenberg, Roger Pielke, Jr. – and the Miami National Hurricane Center’s Jamie Rhome, whom Don Lemon tried to browbeat into linking climate change to Ian.

The Biden White House and UN Intergovernmental Politicized Climate Cabal (IPCC) cannot abide that. They mean to monopolize the conversation, impose their climate and energy agenda, and silence anyone who challenges them.

The White House even has an Office of the National Climate Advisor, which works hand-in-glove with Big Tech and news organizations to censor, deplatform and demonetize inconvenient facts about climate models, actual global temperatures, hurricane and climate change reality, fossil fuel benefits, and the massive land areas, raw materials and mining required for wind, solar and battery power. Anything that differs from its narrative is “denial” and “disinformation.”

At stake are our freedoms and living standards, our access to reliable, affordable energy, and the looming specter of life in a totalitarian state of constant deprivation and censorship. Remember that in November.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.

Photo: NASA via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Total Fertility Rate: Metros — San Francisco (Lowest) to Jacksonville (Highest)

Wendell Cox — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 20:28:58 -0400

As we previously reported, US total fertility rates have dropped markedly since 2010. The total fertility rate (TFR) is “the expected number of lifetime births per woman women given current birth rates by age.” Generally, the TFR needs to be at least 2.10 for a society to maintain its population.

Few of the nation’s 56 major metropolitan areas (more than 1,000,000 population) have retained TFRs above replacement rate based on data from the American Community Survey: 2016 to 2020 (Table). This is more than a measurement of pandemic effects and includes less than one year of the pandemic. The mid-point of this data is 2018.

While TFR data is available from the Centers for Disease Control at the state and national level, there little or no readily available data at the metropolitan, county or municipality level. But there is sufficient ACS data to perform the calculations. The TFR calculation method, used to derive the metropolitan area data, is described in this government of Singapore page. The average TFR among the 56 major metropolitan areas was 1.785 over the 2016 to 2020 period.

Major Metropolitan Areas with the Highest TFRs

Among the 15 major metropolitan areas with the highest total fertility rates, seven are located in the South and five in the Midwest. Three are located in the west and none are located in the Northeast The highest ranking major metro in the north east is Buffalo, with a TFR of 1.82. Pittsburgh ranks 25th, at 1.80.
(Figure 1).

Only three of the largest metropolitan areas have TFRs at or above the population replacement rate.

Jacksonville is the highest with a rate of 2.19 children per women of childbearing years.Tulsa with a TFR of 2.12 has the second highest total fertility rate. Honolulu ranks third with a TFR of 2.10.

The other 53 major metropolitan areas have total fertility rates at lower than replacement rate.

Fresno, one of the three recent additions to the list of major metropolitan areas (the others being Tulsa and Honolulu) ranked number four, with a TFR of 1.99.

Ten other major metros had TFRs of at least 1.90. This includes, in order, Grand Rapids, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Salt Lake City, Detroit, Dallas Fort Worth, Columbus, and Birmingham.Salt Lake City’s 11th ranking may be surprising, located in the state of Utah, which has often had the highest TFR in the nation.

Only two of the nation’s nine metropolitan areas with more than 5 million residentsare ranked in the top 15--- Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Major Metropolitan Areas with the Lowest TFRs

San Francisco had the lowest total fertility rate, at 1.49. It was closely followed by Los Angeles with a TFR of 1.52. In addition to these two, California also had the major metro with the 6th lowest TFR, in San Jose, at 1.59 (Figure 2).

Five other metros had total fertility rates of under 1.60, including Austin, Boston, Hartford, and Orlando.

The balance of the top 15 had total fertility rate of 1.70 or lower. These include (from lowest to highest) Denver, Portland, Miami, New York, Tampa-St. Petersburg, New Orleans, Washington and Las Vegas.

Additional Observations

California has large TFR differences between its broad regions, the coast and the interior. The four major metros on the coast (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose) have far lower TFRs, averaging 1.58, compared to the interior major metros (Riverside-San Bernardino, Sacramento and Fresno), which average 1.86, a different of almost 20%.

Raleigh (1.82) and Seattle (1.77) have stronger TFRs than other tech centers, such as San Francisco (1.49), San Jose (1.59), Austin (1.53), Denver (1.61) and Portland (1.62).

International Context

Total Fertility Rates have been declining in most areas of the world. The US TFR had declined to a level similar with those of European nations, as of 2020. The estimated US major metropolitan area TFR, averaging 1.79 remain healthier than that of metropolitan London (including East and Southeast England), at about 1.64 (derived from Office for National Statistics data). The USmajor metro TFR is far higher than that we have estimated for metro Tokyo (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba), at 1.21 and metro Seoul (Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon), based on Korea Statistical Information Service data, at 0.73. There are also reports that the TFRs of metropolitan Shanghai and metropolitan Beijing are even lower, at approximately 0.70 (Note). America may not be producing enough children, but it’s hardly doing worse than most of its prime competitors.

Note: The provinces, which are also the municipalities of Shanghai and Beijing include virtually all of the built-up urban areas and the commuting shed to the outside, and are thus metropolitan labor markets.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photo: Jacksonville: US major metropolitan area with the highest estimated Total Fertility Rate (2016-2020), via Wikimedia under CC 4.0 License.

Can the South Escape its Demons?

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 15:08:23 -0400

Out on the dusty prairie west of Houston, the construction crews have been busy. Gone are the rice fields, cattle ranches and pine forests that once dominated this part of the South. In their place sit new homes and communities. But they are not an eyesore; the homes are affordable and close to attractive town centres, large parks and lakes. These are communities rooted in the individual, the family and a belief in self-governance.

The new American Dream has its heart in the states of the old Confederacy. But its allure does not merely lie in a conservative embrace of lower taxes, less regulation and greater self-reliance, although these surely matter. More important are the opportunities that come from building businesses and owning new homes, not for the privileged few but for an increasingly diverse, and growing, populace.

As Marianne Pina, who came to Dallas as a young adult before founding a five-million-dollar business specialising in minority recruitment and job placement, told me: “The American Dream stereotype still exists here. If you work hard, you can make it. It’s still up to you as an individual.”

But lurking in the background, the South’s rebirth remains threatened by its historical demons: racism, white nationalism and overzealous religious fervour. This is partly because, as the political scientist V.O. Key noted, the South remains the only region of America that has been conquered and subjugated. It is, he wrote in 1949, a prisoner of its racial legacy in its politics and social structure; only when that problem has been addressed can the region ascend to its potential. Indeed, the economic consequences of slavery persisted well into the 1960s.

Even today, despite its ascendance, the South still lags somewhat behind the nation both in income and education levels. It is still castigated by progressive academics (increasingly a redundant concept) for being wedded to “racial conservatism”. It was only in 2013 that liberal chief justice Steve Breyer compared the region’s racial climate to “a plant disease”.

Anyone who has spent time outside academia knows this is increasingly no longer the case. Ever since the 1960s, business leaders in the South have worked overtime to embrace racial diversity, if not for moral reasons, but economic ones. Perhaps that explains why people from outside the region are pouring in: the Southern states account for six of the top ten gainers in interstate migration, led by Texas and Florida. In contrast, the biggest losers are the progressive strongholds of New York, Illinois, and California.

Significantly, while the African-American population has declined in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, it is expanding in cities such as Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville. Immigrants, mostly from developing countries and Asia, are also moving in. According to research by demographer Wendell Cox, the fastest growth in a city’s foreign-born population over the past decade was in Nashville, where it exceeded 40%, while those in DFW, Houston and Austin increased by more than 25%. Once seen as a dominant immigrant melting pot, Los Angeles, by contrast, saw their foreign-born populations shrink.

“In the past, you would go to New York, but people have found life was very challenging there,” developer La Lou Davies, who moved to Houston from Nigeria, explains. “It’s hard to find a place to live. By the 1990s, people started going to places like Houston, which have lower entry costs for housing and better business environments. Getting that first apartment, or a lease for a business, is so much easier.”

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Photo credit: Wesley Hetrick via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Florida Downtown Commutes Fall the Least from COVID, Recover the Most

Wendell Cox — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Mass transit may have taken the biggest hit from Covid-19, declining by 55% in the New York urban area, 43% in Los Angeles and 57% in Chicago, but car commutes also suffered. The latest INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard finds that US vehicle traffic to downtowns (central business districts) also declined by a substantial 44% in the pandemic year of 2020. According to Bob Pishue, an INRIX traffic analyst: “COVID-19 has completely transformed when, where and how people move. Government restrictions and the continued spread of the virus led to shifts in travel behavior seemingly overnight,” adding that “Morning commutes in cities across the world went without delay as people reduced auto and transit travel to offices, schools, shopping centers and other public spaces.”

There has been a good side to this reduction, which led to a “reduction in congestion has resulted in quicker commutes for essential workers, more reliable deliveries and streamlined freight movement, all of which are vital to the economy, ”Pishue further reported that “We expect downtown trips will continue to lag suburban and rural travel through 2021.”

Downtown Commuting Losses

INRIX provided downtown data for 25 US urban areas, and the one place where downtowns did best was in Florida. The sunshine state’s downtown economies held up the best. The smallest drop in downtown commuting from February 2020 to February 2021 was in Tampa-St. Petersburg, where travel to downtown Tampa declined 16%. Downtown travel declined 18% in Miami, 23% in Orlando, 26% in San Diego and 27% in Atlanta. By comparison, the average vehicle trip loss for the 25 downtowns was considerably larger, at 43% (Figure 1).

Portland, Oregon suffered the largest loss over the same period of time, at 66%. Portland was closely followed by San Francisco, with a 64% loss. The Washington (DC-VA-MD) urban area had a loss of 60%, followed by Detroit at 59% and Boston at 56% (Figure 2).

Downtowns in the nation’s three largest metropolitan areas also suffered significant losses in vehicle trips (Figure 3).

The largest downtown, in New York had a loss of 48 percent, worse than the 25 metro average of 43%. This loss was considerably less than many others, such as the Florida downtowns noted above. However, vehicle trips are not nearly so important in New York, where more than 75% of downtown commuting is by transit, rather than by car. The transit losses have been more severe, especially on the long distance commuter rail lines, which continue to operate at more than 75% losses, while the subway does little better at more than a 60% loss, as of April 16. The New York metro has the highest percentage of its employment in downtown (among the major metropolitan areas), at 20.2 percent.

The second largest downtown, in Chicago, also lost 48 percent of its vehicle trips. Downtown Chicago’s transit market share is also strong, at 46% (better than any other major CBD outside New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington). Like New York, Chicago’s commuter rail ridership fell even further, more than 90 percent. Chicago has one of the largest downtown employment shares among the major metros, at 12.5%.

The Los Angeles metro, which trails only New York in population has a small downtown area for its size and lost a smaller 34% of its vehicle trips. Comprising only 2.6% of employment, downtown Los Angeles has a metropolitan employment share that is about one-eighth that of New York and one-fifth that of Chicago (Figures 4 & 5). Downtown Los Angeles has far less transit commuting than in the other two largest metros, with a rate of 23%. This is more than two thirds below New York and about one-half that of Chicago.

Downtown Commuting Recoveries

As economies have begun to open up, the three urban areas in which downtown oriented traffic had the least loss over the past year also had the largest recovery in traffic from April 2020 to February 2021.

Tampa-St. Petersburg recovered 79% of its downtown traffic from April to February. Miami recovered 76%, while Orlando experienced a 68% recovery. Atlanta recovered 67% of its traffic. St. Louis had the fifth best recovery, at 63% (Figure 6).

The smallest recovery was in Portland, which also had the largest decline (above) up only 14% from April to February, far worse than the other 24 metropolitan areas. More than automobile traffic has declined. Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, reported an 80 percent drop in downtown holiday foot traffic over the holiday season compared to last year, which it attributed to the effect of remote work and protests.

San Francisco and Washington had the second and third worst recovery at 26% and 28% respectively. These two urban areas also had the second and third largest traffic volume over the past year (Figure 7).

The Challenge for Downtowns

INRIX summarized the challenges for downtown:

“Downtown areas experienced large decreases in trips throughout the day, as working from home, restaurant, entertainment, fitness and other brick-and-mortar closures, along with limits on gatherings, had an outsized effect in the densest parts of each region.”

Recoveries are likely to take longer in the downtown areas:

“Downtowns, the hardest hit areas by the pandemic due to the densification of people, employment, office buildings, restaurants and entertainment, are projected to be last to recover during the re-emergence period, lagging suburban and rural travel throughout 2021.”

This is not just a US phenomenon. INRIX noted similar international trends in the first two months of 2021 (Figures 8 & 9). A just released article in The Pulse notes similar trends in Australia’s downtowns provides a broad analysis of broader economic impacts.

To be sure, downtowns everywhere will recover from their nadir. But the much of the exodus of work away from the densest employment centers, the largest downtowns, seems likely to continue to some extent for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Downtown Tampa, Greatest sustained employment during the pandemic and the greatest recovery via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

The Age of Space Reconnaissance

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 20:28:58 -0500

Wherever profit leads us,
to every sea and shore
For love of gain the wide
world’s harbors we explore.
— Dutch poet Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679)

Once Westerners were explorers — daredevils driven by greed, faith, and curiosity to (as they used to say on the original Star Trek) “seek out new life and new civilizations.” In what the historian J. H. Parry called the “Age of Reconnaissance,” Europeans and their descendants were animated with a “fierce competitive pugnacity” out of which the modern world emerged.

Today’s “innovators” in social-media firms, with their cult of surveillance, may seem pale in comparison, but we see the outlines of a new, more breathtaking technological future beyond the cyberspace mind swamp and out to the solar system and beyond. The builders of this new era — egotists and inveterate schemers such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson — are creating something more than better ways to silence dissent or post cat videos. They are creating a new world that, if we do not get to experience it, may shape the reality of our children and grandchildren.

This new Age of Reconnaissance involves more than just a handful of over-rich moguls. They are part of a vast entrepreneurial surge that includes more than 50 players engaged in everything from launch facilities and launch-service provision to reusable-rocket production and moon and Mars landers and vehicles. This is no minor niche market. Boosted by a huge surge of investment, space-industry global revenues are up more than twofold since the early 2000s, from $175 billion in 2005 to almost $424 billion in 2019. By 2040, Morgan Stanley projects, space-industry annual revenues globally should reach $1.2 trillion.

The first Age of Reconnaissance started in the 1300s, ultimately redrawing the map of the world and creating the first global economy. Its buccaneers were often flawed, with motivations that were complex and even contradictory. As Bernal Díaz, a soldier with Cortés, explained, they came “to serve God and His Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do.”

The great outward push began with the Italian city-states of the Renaissance and spread to other parts of Europe. Many were poor but resource-rich city-states such as Venice, and, later, nations such as Portugal that had few resources and were dependent on trade. Between 1000 and 1800 the greatest success was generally secured by those who perfected maritime technology, starting with the Vikings, the Venetians, and the Genoese, then spreading north to the Baltic Hansa, and then to the Netherlands and England. Many of these earlier explorers were privately financed, and some, such as Sir Francis Drake, were openly piratical. The great ocean adventures also led to great technological advances, such as extremely precise clocks that were used to calculate longitude.

Other early exploration missions were largely government-funded, and the rewards from those missions were owned by sovereign governments. With Christopher Columbus’s success in landing in the Americas (1492) and Vasco da Gama’s navigation around the Cape of Good Hope to India (1497), interest in fielding missions of exploration grew dramatically in the 1490s and early 1500s. While no one knew the precise nature of the treasure awaiting them, the anticipation of untold new wealth was a hot topic of conversation in royal courts and merchant houses throughout Europe.

As is true today, there were many skeptics of the whole enterprise. As one 16th-century Italian historian suggested: “What need have we of what is found everywhere in Europe?” Indeed, the cost of exploration was very high, as were the risks associated with success; crews suffered from disease and many ships were lost. Governments also needed money to fund other initiatives, such as wars based on religion or for territorial domination. The solution to this problem — in monarchies as well as the Dutch Republic — was to establish the “joint-stock company,” a new form of enterprise in which risks and rewards were spread across a large base of investors.

Read the rest of this piece at National Review

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Marshall Toplansky is a clinical assistant professor of management science at the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University. He is a research fellow at the university’s Hoag Center for Real Estate and Finance and at the Center for Demographics and Policy.

Photo credit: SpaceX via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

The Big Moves: Where People Are Moving

Wendell Cox — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 20:29:01 -0500

For decades, New York has been the leading exporter of people to other states, though has been severely challenged since 2000 by California. During five years around the housing bust, more net domestic migrants left California than New York. Then, for a time, California’s annual losses were not quite as severe, but were restored to the largest loss in 2019, according to Census Bureau estimates.

There has been considerable publicity about the net domestic migration losses of from 2010 to 2019: New York (minus 1,380,000), California (minus 912,000), Illinois (minus 866,000) and New Jersey (minus 491,000), and about the many who relocated to the most popular destinations, Florida (1,230,000), Texas (1,146,000), North Carolina (476,000) and Arizona (453,000).

Yet, as the list of the 50 biggest moves below shows, some of the strongest moves are fairly local and not often highlighted. A review of the biggest moves --- the net population migrating between states (and the District of Columbia) reveals that the top 10 such pairs, represent more than one-third of all the 2019 net domestic migration in the nation (about 785,000), according to American Community Survey data. This concentration compares to the overall possible pairs of more than 2,500 (such as Alabama to Arizona and Arizona to Alabama, etc.). The four largest losing states (New York, California, Illinois and New Jersey) are large, ranking first, fourth, sixth and 11th in population. Even so, their net domestic outmigration rates all rank in the top ten (Figure 1).

Among the 10 pairs with the greatest net migration of net migrants (in migration minus out migration), just four states account for all of the largest losses: California (holding 4 positions), New York (3), New Jersey (2) and Illinois (1). The destination states are far more dispersed, with 8 states represented in the top ten. Two states appear twice, the year’s net domestic migration leader Florida, and rather surprisingly Pennsylvania, which has been one of the slowest growing states for decades

Leaving California: The largest interstate move in 2019 was from California to Texas, with a net migration of 45,200 residents. California also sent a net 31,500 residents to Arizona, the third largest loss, 20,900 to Nevada, the sixth largest loss and 20,700 to Oregon, the eighth largest loss. Interestingly, the three of the four largest number of leavers went to the states that border California, while the largest number was attracted by Texas, with its major metropolitan areas more than 1,000 miles away.

The most likely driver of this migration is California’s high cost of living. Each of the recipient states have a lower cost of living than California, with its excessively high housing costs and high taxes. Not surprisingly, better housing affordability (lower house prices relative to incomes) is strongly related to net domestic migration (Figure 2). Housing costs represent more than 85% of the cost of living difference between higher cost metropolitan areas (like in California) and the national average (Figure 3) and housing affordability is strongly related to net domestic migration. Moreover, Arizona also has an advantage with its strong attraction to retirees.

Leaving New York (and New Jersey): Movers from New York to Florida accounted for the second largest volume (38,500). But many New Yorkers are moving to nearby states. The fourth largest number of net migrants left New York for New Jersey (26,700) and the fifth largest number left New York for Pennsylvania (24,000). Another 12,600 New Yorkers relocated to adjoining Connecticut, which ranked 21st among the larger migration pairs. Nearby New Jersey, which gained so many New Yorkers, itself gave up 20,900 residents to Pennsylvania, while Maryland sent 7,300 residents to Pennsylvania (ranked 37th), one county ofwhich is in the Washington-Baltimore combined statistical area (commuting zone or CSA). The keystone state was the somewhat surprising domestic migration winner in the Northeast.

Leaving Illinois: There were strong movements out of Illinois to nearby states, including 19,200 net movers to adjacent Indiana, the 9th largest move. Another 10,400 exited northward to adjacent Wisconsin. This, like the New York area, could be at least partially a pre-pandemic flight away from density, with Chicago CSA core county Cook and its four adjacent counties accounting for nearly 70% of the huge Illinois state outmigration since 2010.

Moving to States in the Northeast: Much of New Jersey and counties both in northeastern Pennsylvania and western Connecticut are within the New York CSA. It seems likely that some of this migration reflects households seeking less dense, and more affordable, surroundings. This is even before the pandemic, with the strong movement reported from denser portions of urban areas to suburbs and exurbs. The city of New York, far and away the nation’s densest urbanization, experienced a net domestic outmigration of 900,000 between 2010 and 2019, accounting for 65% of the state loss (according to Census Bureau estimates).

Big Moves Between Attractor States: Even the states that attract the most domestic migrants can lose migrants to other states. For example, domestic migration leader Florida lost 15,100 residents to Texas (the 12th largest move). Second largest attractor Texas lost 14,100 net residents to Colorado (the 16th largest move). Tennessee, a strong gainer, attracted 7,000 residents from Florida and 5,200 from Texas.North Carolina, which has been the third strongest gainer in this decade lost 6,200 migrants to neighboring South Carolina in 2019 (the 45th largest move).

The Moving Across the Nation and Across the State Line

Net domestic migration continues to be principally to the South, the intermountain West and the Pacific Northwest, with most destinations having a lower cost of living than California or New York. Yet, as indicated above, that is not all the story. There are still strong moves within regions and sub regions, throughout the Northeast and Midwest, as the strong moves to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Indiana attest. The big flight may be from New York and California to places like Texas and Florida, but the story is more nuanced and complex than is often supposed.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Photograph: Moving from New York: Pennsylvania suburbs (Pike County), by author.

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Net Domestic Migration

Top 50 State to State Moves: 2019

Rank	FROM-TO	Net Movers	Rank	FROM-TO	Net Movers
1	California-Texas	45,172	26	Illinois-Wisconsin	10,381
2	New York-Florida	38,512	27	Illinois-Florida	9,891
3	California-Arizona	31,487	28	Illinois-California	9,393
4	New York-New Jersey	26,722	29	Washington-Arizona	9,373
5	New York-Pennsylvania	23,977	30	California-Utah	9,317
6	California-Nevada	20,889	31	New York-Georgia	8,703
7	New Jersey-Pennsylvania	20,850	32	Maryland-North Carolina	7,955
8	California-Oregon	20,662	33	New Mexico-Texas	7,663
9	Illinois-Indiana	19,172	34	Virginia-California	7,512
10	New Jersey-Florida	16,190	35	Maryland-Pennsylvania	7,283
11	Pennsylvania-Florida	15,336	36	New York-South Carolina	7,247
12	Florida-Texas	15,064	37	Maryland-Florida	7,065
13	California-Washington	14,909	38	Massachusetts-New Hampshire	6,992
14	Illinois-Texas	14,641	39	Florida-Tennessee	6,966
15	California-Colorado	14,265	40	Illinois-Colorado	6,698
16	Texas-Colorado	14,106	41	Massachusetts-Florida	6,696
17	Ohio-Florida	13,745	42	New Jersey-Georgia	6,540
18	New York-North Carolina	13,724	43	Missouri-Kansas	6,380
19	California-Idaho	13,350	44	Indiana-Florida	6,249
20	New York-California	13,235	45	North Carolina-South Carolina	6,200
21	New York-Connecticut	12,566	46	Pennsylvania-North Carolina	6,120
22	Oregon-Washington	12,373	47	Illinois-Tennessee	6,089
23	Michigan-Florida	11,727	48	California-Tennessee	6,011
24	New Jersey-North Carolina	11,003	49	California-Florida	5,936
25	Illinois-Georgia	10,828	50	New Jersey-Delaware	5,889
Data Derived from American Community Survey

Florida in the Election

Sami J. Karam — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 20:29:01 -0400

Former mayor Mike Bloomberg has announced that he would spend as much as $100 million of his own money to help Vice-President Biden prevail in Florida on Election Day. This underscores once again the importance of Florida in this and every presidential contest.

Florida has a good track record of picking the winner in a presidential election. With the messy 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, the state gained prominence as the ultimate prize and must-win battleground. To be sure, it is not a perfect track record, given that Florida favored George H. W. Bush in 1992 and Richard Nixon in 1960 over winners Bill Clinton and John Kennedy. If you go to earlier times, you also find that Floridians misfired with John Davis and James Cox in 1924 and 1920, two unknowns today except among aficionados of electoral history. But in sum, four misses out of 25 elections over a century can indeed be called a strong track record.

The stakes are high in 2020 given the state’s 29 Electoral College votes and the tightness of the race according to the polls. Vice President Biden is now nominally ahead by 1 to 3%, an insignificant gap that can easily close or widen in the remaining days of the campaign, depending on a slew of factors, not least the performance of each candidate in the upcoming debates.

In 2016, candidate Trump won the state by a plurality of 48.6% to Hillary Clinton’s 47.4%, a lead so slim that it would not be deemed meaningful in a poll today. In the same pattern seen across other states, Clinton carried the large urbanized counties encompassing the Miami-West Palm Beach corridor, Orlando, Gainesville (home to the University of Florida), Tampa and Tallahassee while Trump swept all rural states and also managed to prevail in some smaller cities such as St Petersburg, Fort Myers and Jacksonville. In 2008 and 2012, Obama won Florida by margins of 2.5% over John McCain and 0.9% over Mitt Romney, with roughly the same urban-rural divide as in 2016. There is little doubt that the map will look the same in 2020, with some variances that may or may not in the aggregate tip the state to the Democrats.

2020 vs. 2016

The questions then are what has changed since 2016 and are these changes important enough to overcome other factors?

ONE, the population of Florida has grown by about 5% from 20.6 million in 2016 to an estimated 21.6 million in 2020, with over 90% of this growth coming from migration from other states and from foreign immigration. Owing to the large number of older people, Florida’s natural growth rate (births minus deaths) only adds about 20,000 to the population annually. The overall population growth is neutral or marginally positive for Biden as most migration originates from blue Northeastern states or from Puerto Rico and Latin America.

It is estimated that over 100,000 Puerto Ricans relocated to Florida (and many more to other states) after hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. Assuming that they vote, they could make a difference for Biden in a close election, given that not all are pleased with President Trump’s handling of Puerto Rico in the days after Maria. More broadly in other US states, the Hispanic vote would favor Democrats but the case of Florida is complicated by a large contingent of Cuban-Americans who generally prefer the harder line Republican stance towards the Cuban regime.

TWO, the number of people aged 64 and over has grown faster than other age groups, which means that Florida has gotten older since 2016 and will continue to get older. In theory, this would benefit the President because he usually polls better with older age groups but the change does not seem significant enough to neutralize the margin of error or other factors. Still, it can be considered a net plus for Trump on the margin. And in Florida, everything on the margin can make a difference.

THREE, the number of people declaring no party affiliation has continued to grow, an indication that independents could weigh more in this and future elections. They tend to make up their minds in the final weeks of the campaign in October and early November, a delay that increases the possibility of earlier polls being wide off the mark. This is of no particular advantage to either candidate but adds uncertainty to the current polls.

New Factors

Among non-demographic factors is of course the coronavirus pandemic. It hit Florida severely in the summer and has caused nearly 13,000 deaths so far. Because the state sees over 200,000 deaths in a typical year, these excess pandemic deaths add 6 to 7% to the total, an incidence that is tragic for the next of kin but that can go largely unnoticed by the vast majority of people whose families were untouched. In addition, a sizable segment of Trump supporters see the pandemic as a hoax or at least an exaggeration, a stance that binds them to the President whom they see as a bulwark against the spread of conspiracies by the nefarious (in their view) elite media. In the end, the pandemic is likely to prove neutral for both candidates, with each constituency looking at it through its own political lens.

More important are the economic consequences of the pandemic. Florida was hurt by the shuttering of several sectors, not least travel and hospitality, two of the pillars of the state economy. But here again, some people will blame the President for mishandling the crisis while others will blame alarmist elements of the media and elites for encouraging a lockdown in this or other parts of the country. The notion that the lockdowns were more damaging to the economy than the pandemic has many adherents in Florida and other states, including among some well-heeled researchers and academics. Because Trump is blamed by some for the mishandling of the pandemic and Biden is seen by others as more likely to impose future lockdowns, the impact of the pandemic economy on electoral choices is likely a wash.

Read the rest of this piece at Populyst.

Sami J. Karam is the founder and editor of populyst.net and the creator of the populyst index™. populyst is about innovation, demography and society. Before populyst, he was the founder and manager of the Seven Global funds and a fund manager at leading asset managers in Boston and New York.

Photo credit: Vox Efx via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Two Decades of Interstate Migration

Wendell Cox — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 20:29:01 -0400

America is still a mobile nation. Back in the 2000-2010 decade, 12.9 million people moved interstate, nearly five percent of the total population. In the 2010s the population has been a bit less mobile, with net domestic migration of 11.7 million residents, slightly under four percent. Nonetheless, 11.7 million is a large number. This is nearly equal to the population of Ohio, with only five states being larger (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois). This article describes net domestic migration trends by state from 2000 to 2019 (Note).

Top Domestic Migration Population Gainers

As has been the case with population growth for decades, states in the South and the West had the largest numbers of net domestic migrants. Six of the top ten states were in the South, and four were in the West. However, unlike in the middle to late decades of the 20th Century, California no longer ranks among the leaders.

Florida: Number 1 in Net Domestic Migration

Florida and Texas attracted by far the largest number of new net domestic migrants over the past two decades (Figure 1). Florida added nearly 2.5 million residents from other states. This is more people than live in each of 18 states and the District of Columbia. Florida also placed fifth in its proportionate net domestic migration gain,—15.5%—in relation to its 2000 population (Figure 2).

Back in 2000, Florida had 15.3 million residents, and grew to 21.5 million by 2019. This 6.2 million increase propelled Florida to third place, ahead of New York, which grew from 18.3 million in 2000 to 19.4 million in 2019.

Texas: Number 2 in Net Domestic Migration

Texas, the nation’s second most populous state had the second largest gain in net domestic migration, at just below 2 million. During the two decades, the two largest Texas metropolitan areas, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston moved from below the top five to positions four and five respectively.

Arizona and North Carolina: Over 1 Million Gains

Arizona had a net domestic migration gain of 1.2 million, the third largest gain. In proportional terms, Arizona was the second largest gainer, at 22.8% relative to its 2000 population. North Carolina nearly equaled Arizona’s population increase in numbers from domestic migration and had the sixth largest percentage gain (14.3%).

Other Top Population Gainers

Six other states added more than one-half million residents through net domestic migration. These included Georgia (820,000), South Carolina (680,000), Nevada (610,000), Washington (570,000), Colorado (560,000) and Tennessee (520,000).

Top Proportionate Gainers

Nevada had by far the largest proportionate gain in net domestic migration, at 30.5% relative to its 2000 population. Idaho and South Carolina placed third and fourth respectively, behind Arizona and ahead of Florida. Colorado, Oregon, Delaware and Georgia followed North Carolina (above), with proportionate gains of from 10.0% to 13.1%.

Again, all of the top proportionate gainers were in the South or West, with five from each region. Delaware, perhaps best seen as a border state, may be a surprise, because of its location in the Northeast Corridor (Washington to Boston), and its northernmost county (New Castle, with county seat Wilmington) in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. However, the net domestic migration gains in Delaware were all in its two other counties (Kent and Suffolk), which are well-positioned to attract relatively large numbers of movers from the nearby Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, which shed nearly 600,000 net domestic migrants over the last two decades.

The Losers: Moving from New York and California

Five Northeastern states were among the 10 losing the most net domestic migrants from 2000 to 2019. In addition, three of the 10 greatest losses were in the Midwest, one in the West and one in the South.

Three states lost more than one million residents through net domestic migration. New York lost the most at 3.1 million (Figure 3). This is as many people as live in the states of Nevada or Arkansas. New York was also the largest proportional loser, at 16.2% of its 2000 population (Figure 4).

California was not far behind, losing 2.4 million residents by net domestic migration. This is more people than live in Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city. Due to having more than twice as many residents as New York, its proportional loss was much less, at 7.1%, ranking the tenth greatest in the nation.

Illinois lost the third most net domestic migrants (1.5 million) and had the second largest proportional loss, at 12.1% of its 2000 population.

New Jersey, which is largely split between the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, suffered the fourth net domestic migration loss, at nearly one million. New Jersey placed third in proportional decline, at 11.3%.

Two other states lost more than 500,000 net domestic migrants, Michigan and Ohio. Massachusetts, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Connecticut lost over 300,000 net domestic migrants. Louisiana’s huge loss can be largely attributed to the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, in the middle 2000s.

Other Proportional Losses

Four of the largest proportional losses were in Northeastern states, three were in the West, two in the Midwest and one in the South.

Outside of New York, Illinois and New Jersey, Alaska had the largest proportional loss, at 10.8%. Louisiana lost 9.4% of its population to net domestic migration, while Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan and Rhode Island lost more than eight percent.

Trends

The future could see an acceleration of the trends noted above. The COVID-19 has produced all sorts of evidence that people are moving away from overcrowding and density (both residential and employment) and relying more on telework than on physical commutes, especially to the largest central business districts. This has shown than many people do not have to live within convenient daily commuting distance from employment locations, because their commutes are from one room to another. In 2019, more than one-third of intercounty net migration moves were employment related, according to the Current Population Survey. In the future, fewer people are likely to need to move to be closer to their jobs, because of a probably much higher rate of teleworking.

The biggest losses have taken place in the largest legacy downtowns: New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston.

At the same time, housing considerations drove about one quarter of net domestic migration. Three of the states losing the most net domestic migrants from 2000 to 2020 have severely unaffordable metropolitan areas, according to the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey. These include California (with Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Riverside-San Bernardino, Sacramento, and Fresno), and New York and New Jersey, which includes nearly all of the New York metropolitan area.

The large net domestic migration losses in these states could well continue, due to increased teleworking and overly expensive housing. After COVID, Americans are again on the move, a trend that will impact our economy, politics and social future. It will be fascinating if new migration numbers surpass those of the past decade.

Note: The Census Bureau estimates net domestic migration trends, which are released with the annual population estimates. In both the 2000s and 2010s, data is provided from April (the decennial census date) of the “00” year through June of the “09” year (the end of the annual “estimate year”). As a result, no data is available for January through March 2000, July 2009 through March 2010 and June 2019 through December 2019.

Photograph: Chicago Loop, second largest US central business district, in the state with the second largest net domestic migration loss rate from 2000 to 2019 (by author).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

The Next Economy: Following the Trail of U.S. Job Growth

Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 17:02:09 -0500

A decade ago, in the wake of the Great Recession, Lee County, Florida was dubbed “the foreclosure capital of the country” by the national media, the poster child for all that had gone wrong with the American economy.

“Homes are selling at 80 percent off their peak prices,” reported The New York Times in February, 2009. “Only two years after, there were more jobs than people to work them, fast-food restaurants are laying people off or closing. Crime is up, school enrollment is down, and one in four residents received food stamps in December, nearly a fourfold increase since 2006.

“Welcome,” boomed The Times, “to the American dream in reverse.”

What a difference a decade makes. Today, Florida—and Lee County—is thriving again, with thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of people flocking to the Sunshine State annually. It seems that—surprise!—warm weather and zero income tax are catnip for employers and workers alike.

But Florida is hardly alone. Job growth in the U.S. over the past decade has been about 13 percent but some states and some regions have been outperforming the nation by a large margin. So which states are hot, and which are not? And what does the future hold—especially in key sectors like technology and professional services?

To find out, we analyzed recent job growth data for all 50 states over ten-, five-, and one-year periods. For each time period we looked at overall growth, as well as the manufacturing, high-tech and professional and technical business services sectors.

What emerges is a picture, particularly for job creation, that is complex but consistent over the past 10 years—and likely will be for the decade ahead. All people may have been created equal—but states are not. Simply put, the big winners are all in the Sunbelt and the Intermountain West. And we project that trend will continue.

At the top of the heap—with growth rates over 20 percent—are, in order, Utah, Nevada, Florida, Texas and Colorado. Their growth has been more than the rate of growth of states like New York and others on the Atlantic seaboard, as well as most Midwestern states. Not surprisingly, these states all boast the highest population growth rates and are home to many of the nation’s fastest growing metros. Austin leads the pack, followed by Orlando. Denver, Dallas and Las Vegas can all be counted among the fastest growing metropolitan regions.

At the end of the list, sadly, there’s consistency as well. The bottom rungs are dominated by poor, resource-dependent states such as Louisiana, West Virginia and Wyoming—but also now include traditionally buoyant economies such as Connecticut, whose 3.3 percent growth over a decade is roughly one quarter of the national average. There’s nothing in the data we looked at that shows these trends will change, either.

Momentum Tilts to the Heartland and the Sunbelt

In our modern high-velocity economy, 10 years can seem like an epoch. Yet our top states generally have remained remarkably consistent in performance. The slowing growth in hyper-regulated California and the generally mediocre performance along the Northeast corridor has boosted the status of states like Texas, Florida, Arizona and Idaho, which are benefiting from mass migration of both companies and people.

Unlike its East Coast counterparts, the Golden State, however, has been a solid performer, though growth has slowed in the past year. It ranked a solid 9th over the past decade, with almost 18 percent growth. California’s strength can be attributed in part to its economic diversity, with strong concentrations in agriculture, information, professional services and entertainment.

It has started to fade, likely due to high housing prices, rising out-migration (Los Angeles lost population last year) and sky high taxes. Last year, the state ranked 13th and, given the fires and new regulatory burdens, one can expect that to drop further. The state’s manufacturing economy is withering, and after averaging about 100,000 new healthcare jobs annually in the nine years before 2018, just 20,000 were created in the last year.

We may be on the cusp of continued weakening for high-tax, highly regulated states—particularly those that lack California’s ideal weather (most of the time) and spectacular topography. New York ranked a respectable 19th over 10 years, but last year it dropped to 22nd. Massachusetts, 16th over the decade, fell to 27th last year. Other traditional leaders, like Illinois, which dropped from 17th worst over 10 years to 4th worst last year and especially Connecticut also are losing momentum, according to last year’s figures. All have dropped off their 10-year pace.

Where Tech Is Headed

Of course, not all jobs are the same. Some tend to pay more, and some occupations are expanding more rapidly as the economy changes. High-tech employment has grown in almost all our leading states, but the biggest winners over ten years have been varied: led by North Carolina, Utah, South Dakota, California and New York.

But here again last year’s numbers project something of a different cast. The biggest change was the emergence as the fastest-growing state in the past year: Idaho. Over 10 years, Idaho registers in the bottom third, but last year it enjoyed the fastest tech growth in the nation. Boise and its surrounding region are booming, with newcomers pouring in from the West, not only California. It is now the fastest-growing metro in the nation.

Click to read the rest of this piece at chiefexecutive.net.

Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His most recent book is The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us. Mark Schill is the Vice President of Research and a community and economic development planner at Praxis Strategy Group.