Republican states recover faster since pandemic

Republican states have created 1.3 million jobs, compared to 341,000 for Democrats since the pandemic. The population, and businesses, are leaving the coasts and going inland and to Florida.

This is the main conclusion of a report prepared by the Brookings Institution and reported by The Wall Street Journal. Businesses and employment migrate from "blue" to "red" states. Thus, Citadel leaves Chicago and moves to Miami, and Caterpillar plans to leave Illinois for Texas.

Migration to Republican states

The better economic performance of Republican states is reflected in the country's internal migration. Thus, according to data collected by Equifax, based on credit data, and analyzed by Moody's, from March 2021 to February 2022, 46 million people changed their zip code. This is the highest figure in 12 years.

The states that have gained the most population are "almost all" Republican, led by Florida, Texas and North Carolina. The biggest losers are "almost all" Democrats, says the WSJ, with California, New York and Illinois leading the way.

The newspaper defines the states as Republican or Democrat according to the classification made by the political analysis portal Cook Political Report, which in turn is based on the direction of the vote in the last two presidential elections.

Better economic performance

Two factors seem to explain these trends. The first is that Republican states recover faster from the pandemic. It's not just that companies and jobs are going to blue states.

The WSJ looks at an index compiled by Moody's from 13 metrics. The conclusions are unequivocal: 11 of the 15 states with the best data are Republicans, and 8 of the 10 worst are Democrats.

Teleworking: new priorities for residency

The other factor is the change in workers' preferences as a result of the pandemic. The place of residence has always been linked, for almost all workers, to the place of work. This is no longer the case.

Un 16% de los ciudadanos quiere trabajar de forma remota permanentemente, segúnun estudio from Stanford University, the University of Chicago and ITAM. Teleworking allows employees to establish their residence based on criteria other than proximity to the workplace. They are looking for cheaper housing, or more spacious, or spaces in which there is a higher quality of life.

The newspaper also notes that "people who switched during the pandemic tended to move to places with fewer pandemic-related restrictions." For this purpose, it cites a academic paper by two researchers from Vanderbilt University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.