The state’s population is flat as residents move south and west

We know this not only from welcoming all New Yorkers who flocked to us in 2020 and early 2021, but also from data showing, year after year, thousands of people from the city and surrounding areas flock to Connecticut, even in years in which we leak people like a fire alarm at a concert.

Then between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022, the number of people leaving Connecticut exceeded the number of new arrivals by 13,547, according to the data, which has notoriously high error rates. If true, that puts us right back into a pattern that saw an average net emigration of 18,300 people per year between 2012 and 2019.

“A destination to touch”

This was predicted by Donald L. Klepper-Smith, a semi-retired economist who moved to South Carolina from Connecticut, becoming part of the picture he has commented on for decades.

“It is highly likely that Connecticut, New York and New Jersey will resume their net emigration trend once the fundamentals around high taxes, high relative costs of doing business and demographic shifts are restored,” Klepper-Smith wrote in a newsletter some weeks.

Coincidentally, South Carolina captured the No. 1 position among all states in 2021-22, with a staggering 84,000 net arrivals that year — a 1.6 percent increase. And that followed a similarly large gain of 82,000 net Palmetto searches over the 15 months of COVID.

Retirement is of course the main driver for the South, but even a slight dip in earlier partial retirements or an increase in young people moving to a state for jobs can make a big difference in migration numbers.

“Consider that every day over 1,000 people turn 65 as baby boomers are now reaching retirement age in droves,” Klepper-Smith wrote in a newsletter this week. “South Carolina’s combination of low taxes, a temperate climate, and less traffic congestion now makes the state a ‘go-to destination’ for retirement alternatives to Florida and elsewhere.”

Connecticut’s migration over the past decade has been terrible, but not as terrible as the bleeding from New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. Nonetheless, these states still attract excellent jobs. Consider that Pepperidge Farm’s parent company, Campbell Soup, is moving the baking icon’s headquarters from Norwalk to Camden, NJ, and is leaving LEGO from Enfield for Boston, in another longtime leaker, Massachusetts.

Many of these Northeastern states, including ours, are showing economic strength, including high tax revenues, with budget surpluses that we certainly didn’t see in the lost decade of 2010-2019. Connecticut outperformed the nation in overall economic growth (but not job creation) for the first nine months of 2022.

quirks in the numbers

Lots of caveats here with the migration numbers: In a typical year, Connecticut will have 80,000 to 110,000 people migrating to and from other states. Because the data is based on survey sampling, a net loss of, say, 15,000 residents can have such large margins of error that it may not actually be a net loss at all.

A true picture requires a look at years of data. But we can’t wait that long to see what’s happened in the pandemic – a time when accurate sampling has been almost impossible. The U.S. Census Bureau hasn’t even reported detailed migration numbers for 2020.

All states benefit from international migration, and Connecticut is at the forefront of what saves our population because our birth rates are low. If we count foreign arrivals, including from Puerto Rico, we ranked 19th among states over the 15 months of COVID, gaining a net population of 20,098.

In July 2021-July 2022, Connecticut even dropped to 31st in foreign arrivals, gaining just 2,749 residents as a result of those 13,547 net out-of-state moves.

Something odd is happening because the state’s economy remains strong in many ways, something we haven’t seen over the past decade as the downsides have piled up.

My theory is that states with large university populations incorrectly tend to migrate. Let’s say you’re driving from Virginia to Yale. In the very unlikely event that a census taker finds you, you’ll probably say you still live with your parents in Richmond.

Then you graduate and work at something like Bridgewater Associates, the Westport hedge fund. Now they’re questioning you and you don’t say you moved out of Virginia because you’ve been here for five or six years. Then, when you leave for a job in Texas, you’ll be logged as if you left Connecticut — without ever having arrived!

A census officer told me my idea might be valid and needs to be investigated. That applies to this whole picture of migration.

A note to Democrats in Parliament: if we really do start losing people again, we have to be careful not to spend all the money we’ve saved since the pandemic.

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