The economic shocks of the housing-market crisis and Great Recession were associated with striking changes in net migration patterns in both rural and urban America, with rural farming communities experiencing different migration trends than other rural areas, according to new research funded by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station. Ken Johnson, a demographer and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin, found: As the economic situation deteriorated, fewer Americans migrated. Counties with histories of net migration losses or minimal migration gains prior to the recession had smaller losses or actually gained migrants during the recession. In contrast, counties with histories of significant migration gain prior to the recession experienced smaller net gains, or lost migrants during the recession. “Overall migration rates slowed to record lows during the Great Recession. We suspect that the recession ‘froze people in place’ with houses they couldn’t sell, retirement plans that lost value, and a precarious labor market that offered little incentive to relocate,” said Johnson, who also is a senior demographer at the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy.
The researchers found clear geographic variation in the patterns of migration change before, during, and after the recession. Just before the Great Recession, migration patterns across the nation were consistent with those of the past several decades. Net migration gains were greatest in large areas of the West and Southeast, in suburban counties of many large metropolitan areas, and the recreational areas of New England, the Upper Great Lakes and the Mountain West. In contrast, migration losses were greatest in rural areas of the Great Plains and the Corn Belt, in much of the industrial belt of the Great Lakes and East, as well as in the Mississippi Delta and the urban cores of large metropolitan areas in the East and Midwest. Most counties with migration losses prior to the recession actually showed migration gains during and after the recession. The patterns are most distinct in the Northern Great Plains, where the impact of the energy boom on migration in the Dakotas is clearly reflected. In areas that gained migrants prior to the recession, migration losses during the recession also are clear. Migration losses were evident in most traditionally fast-growing areas in the West and South.