Justin Fox, Columnist

Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois. Hello … Where?

The three states have seen an exodus, but it’s not all to Texas and it’s not all about taxes.

January 9, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

It’s safer to ride in the cab. — It’s safer to ride in the cab.
Photographer: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

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New York, California and Illinois have been hemorrhaging residents. Almost 3.2 million more people left those states for elsewhere in the U.S. than arrived from other states, from 2010 through 2019, according to population estimates released last week by the Census Bureau. Nine other states saw net out-migration of more than 100,000 people over that period, but none really came close to the big three.

Thanks to 2 million more births than deaths and 1 million newcomers from other countries, California’s population still grew by about 2 million over this period, a gain that trailed only those of Texas and Florida. New York’s population grew but only slightly, while Illinois lost an estimated 159,751 people between 2010 and 2019. Yes, these are all big states, but New York and Illinois ranked second and third in net domestic migration as percentage of 2010 population, behind only Alaska (California ranked 13th).