Looking at Connecticut’s mass exodus crisis

All of us know lots of people who have moved out of Connecticut. With the number of people bidding adieu for other states exceeding arrivals by almost 100,000 over the last five years, the reasons are many.

There’s the middleaged couple who moved to South Carolina because he lost his job at a national bank and couldn’t replace it here, so they headed to a more affordable place with lower taxes and lowcost houses.

There’s the 30ish former Pfizer chemist, also downsized, who migrated to Boston, where he’s hustling as a Lyft driver while also working for a medical device company.

There’s the journalist, just out of college, who had a very good job in Connecticut but moved to a college town in a booming state for a better dating and social life.

There’s the financial analyst, looking at winding down her career in the next few years, who took a head start on preretirement to Sarasota, Fla., where she can wind down her career remotely.

We all know the problem — thousands of people are leaving Connecticut. It’s not just fedup taxpayers fleeing high costs. It’s not just young people flocking to cities. It’s not just young retirees flying south. And it’s not just displaced workers flipping homes and jobs.

Fleeing, flocking, flying, flipping. It’s all of that, with different — sometimes opposite — strategies needed to stanch the bleeding.

On a hot midsummer weekend, it’s worth taking a closer look at the numbers, some of which will surprise even people paying attention

to Connecticut’s 21st century outmigration. I looked at the fiveyear totals and averages from 2013 to 2017 (2018 is not yet released by the U.S. Census Bureau). Data from any one year is less useful because the margins of error are so large — especially between states.

Some highlights:

⏩ Connecticut saw an average net exodus — people arriving minus the number leaving — of 19,065. That’s generally larger than we’ve seen in any period in modern history other than steep recessions. It amounts to onehalf of 1 percent of the population leaving every year.

⏩ Connecticut’s problem is among the worst in the nation, but it’s not nearly as bad as New York and New Jersey, both of which averaged 0.85 percent per year. For New York, that was 168,500 people a year, or 842,000 souls in five years — about the size of New Haven County.

⏩ New York and New Jersey both saw people moving to Connecticut in greater numbers than Connecticut residents moved there. Despite the draw of the big city, New York state, overall, averaged a net migra

tion of 8,920 people a year to Connecticut. We presume much of that is from the city to Fairfield County, where taxes are lower, but county data is not reliable.

⏩ Massachusetts is not immune. In the five years from 2013 to 2017, the Bay State averaged 60,000 net new jobs a year, compared with a meager 7,500 jobs a year for Connecticut. Despite that, Massachusetts saw a net migration to other states of 24,500 people a year, or about onethird of 1 percent.

⏩ Massachusetts made up for the difference in part with higher foreign immigration rates than Connecticut. We see about 20,000 to 25,000 foreign immigrants a year, a number that Connecticut desperately needs to increase — not easily doable while antiimmigrant President Donald Trump is in office.

⏩ We hear stories of moving vans leaving Connecticut for other states and coming back empty. In fact, over the five years, Connecticut saw 407,000 people move in from other states. Yes, 502,000 left but it’s not like no one is arriving. If we could cut the number leaving by just 20 percent, we’d be middle of the pack.

⏩ Florida was by far the largest magnet for people from other states in 201317, with a net influx of 129,000 people a year. Texas was No. 2 at 99,000.

⏩ By percentage, Nevada and Arizona led the nation with 1 percent gains per year, though the total numbers were less than the crowds Florida and Texas welcomed.

⏩ Connecticut’s net exodus peaked in 2016 at a calamitous 37,000, then settled back to 16,650 in 2017.

As I mentioned, any one year is not necessarily accurate, but that 2016 figure can’t help but shock observers.

In a June poll by InformCT, the research arm of the Connecticut Economic Resource Center, 47 percent of respondents “indicated it was likely they would be moving out of Connecticut within the next five years.” That can’t happen, of course, considering the disastrous year of 2016 saw 112,000 people leave — a bit more than 3 percent — but it raises the question, how bad can the situation get?

Two economists who have watched the state economy for decades, Ed Deak and Don KlepperSmith, both said it could get worse before it gets better.

“I think we’re going to see increasing outmigration . ... You’re going to see a step up from 2017,” said KlepperSmith, of DataCore Partners in Connecticut and more recently, West Tisbury, Mass. “At the end of the day, these migration issues are tied to economic growth and fiscal stability.”

But KlepperSmith also said outmigration is a regional issue and that’s why even solidgrowth Massachusetts has a problem with people leaving.

“I’ve met more and more people down South who said they enjoyed their time in New England but they can get more for their money down South,” he said.

Deak, a retired Fairfield University economics professor, said, “With the tolls and higher energy process it looks like the tide is motivating people to rethink where they live.”

That raises questions about the right strategies Connecticut needs to follow to stanch the bleeding. We must cut costs, but we must also invest heavily in cities.

Take the paid family and medical leave bill that passed and was signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont. Every worker in Connecticut — except state employees — will have to kick 0.5 percent of his or her pay into a fund, starting in 2021. That’s $400 for someone making $80,000, for example, with a ceiling of $650 for people at or above the Social Security threshold of about $130,000.

Will paid leave help or hurt the flight of Connecticut residents? We can’t agree on that, but we can all see the numbers.

Bottom line: Yes, we are better off than New York and New Jersey (and certainly Illinois). And yes, Massachusetts is largely in the same boat. But that’s no solace for a state that isn’t growing.