© Tabi Walters

Michigan migration

From here to there

by Patrick Dunn

posted 12/8/2012

An interactive map on Forbes magazine's website provides a fascinating picture of American migration over the past five years--including some encouraging trends for Ann Arbor. Clicking on a county will display every other county with which it exchanged ten or more residents in 2010; counties are highlighted blue if they send more migrants than they take, or red if they take more than they send. Jon Bruner, who created the map for forbes.com, says Washtenaw County displays healthy inbound migration from other counties around the state, as well as New York and Chicago. Outbound migrants head to many major metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, and Dallas. "There are plenty of other places in the country where the rate of migratory exchange is just very low, and you don't see this massive pipeline to the tech industry in California and finance in New York," Bruner says.

Because the map is based on federal tax return data, it undercounts incoming U-M students and departing graduates. But according to Bruner, the U-M drives work-based migration as well: "You could relocate from Seattle to work at a University of Michigan center on computing research, but you could also relocate from Pontiac to a decent wage and a back office at the University of Michigan medical center."   

[Originally published in December, 2012.]