since Co there's been a lot of migration happening within the United States and some areas are booming and some areas are losing out the California Exodus continues cities are losing population As Americans are moving in Mass to the South you may have moved within your city or to a different city you probably noticed some of your neighbors moving out or maybe moving in and those shifts have really reverberated throughout the entire US economy in ways that are radically reshaping the geography of us jobs and the geography of us growth so first we're going to talk
about where then we're going to talk about when why yeah so first we're going to talk about where then we're going to talk about [Music] why some of the biggest beneficiaries of of the post-pandemic economy have been states in the American South and the two biggest examples of that are Texas and Florida Florida actually has the fastest GDP growth of any state in the Union since the start of Co more than a 20% increase Texas is not far behind they've had a GDP increase of more than 14% since the start of Co both those States
have have seen jobs increase by 9% overall on their own those states are the size of midsize European economies and they're growing as fast as rapidly industrializing Nations for example Texas economy grew 5.6% through 2023 that's faster than even China which only grew at 5.2% by comparison that's a lot for States as big as Florida and Texas states in the Rocky Mountains have also seen really rapid growth that includes places like Idaho Utah Arizona Colorado which have seen extremely fast GDP growth and Rapid job gains as remote work enables people to move to those states
on the Pacific coast California has had very fast GDP growth faster than the nation as a whole even though the tech boom throughout the pandemic has really help the state it's lagged behind in terms of job growth Washington state has also seen really rapid GDP growth thanks in large part to the tech boom but with a bit of stronger job growth than California and Oregon lags a little bit behind both the Northeast and Midwest by contrast have been falling behind a bit Illinois and New York in particular have only barely recovered the jobs that they
lost during Co and have had pretty weak GDP growth there are some bright spots Indiana's GDP has grown by more than 8% since the start of the pandemic while Mains has grown by more than 11% but the region as a whole is struggling a bit I'm trying to think is there a big state that I like didn't mention and not really Ohio people will be mad at me but that's fine so what's driving the shifts in economic geography the big obvious one is remote work some of the biggest losers have been dense urbanized unaffordable areas
and some of the biggest winners have been less dense Suburban more affordable areas people when given the flexibility to Tork pick places that are more spacious Suburban States than they did before the pandemic that includes places like Utah and Arizona but also places like Maine keep in mind affordability isn't set in a vacuum another big shift caused by the pandemic was migration to states that allow more housing construction than others housing construction is a big part of the reason why States like Florida and Texas are booming and States like New York and California are struggling
Florida and Texas build tens of thousands more units a year than either New York or California they're some of the fastest Builders even on a per capita basis in the nation another important part of this is the dissolution or at least the weakening of a lot of economic clusters that dominated pre-pandemic America for example before the pandemic about 19% of All Tech jobs were located in California and as soon as the pandemic hit the sheriff started dropping and it started dropping really rapidly and for some specific Industries like software publishing it's near some of the
lowest levels on record other Industries are also spreading out from their historical hubs think Finance from New York or movies from Los Angeles but let's zoom in on Tech in California and in the Bay area in particular in early Co when tech industry was booming it didn't matter so much that California was losing ground to other states the Bay Area had some of the fastest GDP growth in the nation and hiring was still really rapid but when the tech industry slowed down as interest rates Rose and the tech session began it meant California went from
a smaller slice of a growing pie to losing outright and the loss of tech jobs has cost California and the Bay Area a lot the state depends on IPOs and tech pay for a lot of income tax revenue and localities are really dependent on office space and other commercial districts for local sales tax and property tax revenue that's drying up as more Tech workers are leaving the Bay Area and the big destination has been Texas followed by New York Florida and Washington State all states that have Tech hubs of their own like Austin like Seattle
like New York but have had more affordable housing and build more more than San Francisco itself San Francisco has one of the lowest construction rates in the country and is thus one of the most unaffordable cities on the planet but despite losing ground to other states California still has a really big Advantage at the very top end of the tech industry the best jobs the best companies are still in Silicon Valley California's problem isn't that it's economically unsuccessful it's that it fails to include everyone in its economic success the states become so unaffordable that people
have to leave for more accessible less expensive locations States like California and New York are going to have to reform a lot of their policies around housing construction and transportation if they want to compete in this new economy and if they don't the out migration to States like Texas and Florida is only going to continue do you want to talk about any other states you can't say anything about states without somebody getting mad at you and me like what about my home state so you you got to accept that that's going to happen want to
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