Minnesota’s net loss of residents to other parts of the United States in 2022-2023 was worse than in 34 out of 50 states

On Tuesday, I wrote about new Census Bureau data for population and components of population change for 2022-2023 and revisions to the data for previous years. I noted that “they show that, once again, Minnesota lost residents, on net, to other states from 2022 to 2023. In “good” news, the loss was 4,686 residents…” This is clearly an improvement on the previous year’s net loss of 28,893 (revised up from the previous estimate of 19,400), Minnesota’s largest net loss of residents to other parts of the United States since at least 1991-1992.

But while our state’s losses were “better” in 2022-2023 than they were in 2021-2022, they were still pretty bad compared to the figures recorded in other states. Indeed, Minnesota’s net loss of residents to other parts of the United States in 2022-2023 was worse than in 34 out of 50 states, as Figure 1 shows. South Dakota and Wisconsin, by contrast, both posted net gains despite having weather very similar to Minnesota. The winners were, as usual, Texas and Florida.

Figure 1: Net domestic migration, 2022-2023

Source: Census Bureau

As I concluded on Tuesday:

These numbers show that, so far, Governor Walz’ gamble of hoping that the “pull” factor of “progressive” social policies will more than offset the “push” factor of “progressive” economic policies is not paying off.