The South continues to see a wave of Yankees moving in while much of the Northeast flees to Texas and parts of Dixie.
The high cost of living coupled with cold winters is driving hundreds of thousands from New York, Boston and the nation's capital. Many are college educated, attracted to Texas' growing tech industry with Google, Apple, Dropbox and Oracle which all recently built or expanded offices.
“We have a big telecommunications complex in the Dallas area, of course health complexes in Houston and San Antonio, the electronics, gaming and software complex in Austin,” says economist Dr. Ray Perryman.
“With costs dropping and technology improving, you're seeing the oil industry start to pick back up and with that the Texas economy, with the rest of its diversity in technology and other things is doing pretty well right now,” he says. “In fact, the state gained for 40,000 jobs last month and led the nation in job growth.”
Dr. Perryman says the mass exodus from the North has been going on for decades.
“We've been a magnet for people for the last 20 years or so moving into the state, and to some extent, ever since air conditioning became common back in the 1960s, Texas has begun to see more and more people who are willing to move here,” he says.