As Americans fled the Northeast United States with its repressive social policies during the coronavirus pandemic and immigrated to states in the South, the region lost its traditional position as the leader in contributing to the national GDP — to the South.
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have economically overtaken the area including Boston, New York City, and Washington D.C., according to Bloomberg. The population in the Southeast grew by 2.2 million people in the last two years.
“You feel very wanted, right?’’ Chief Financial Officer Bryan Hipsher of the famed financial information firm Dun & Bradstreet, which moved from New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida, said. “You feel very welcomed, clearly.”
“You could throw a dart anywhere at a map of the South and hit somewhere booming,” economist Mark Vitner said.
“We now have more employees in Texas than New York state. It shouldn’t have been that way,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said in March.
The statistics are staggering: the Southeast gained roughly $100 billion in new income in 2020 and 2021; the Northeast lost roughly $60 billion, an analysis of recently published Internal Revenue Service data showed. Since the pandemic began in early 2020, two-thirds of all job growth came in the Southeast, where 9 of the 15 fastest-growing American large cities reside.
The Jacksonville branch of the Mayo Clinic added 2,400 employees last year.
According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, the top seven American cities for real estate investing are Nashville, Dallas/Fort Worth (the nation’s fastest-growing big city), Atlanta, Austin, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Raleigh/Durham, and Miami. Nine of the nation’s 15 fastest-growing cities in 2022 were located in the South, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in May.
In 2022, the Northeast and Midwest lost population; the West only added 153,000 people, and “would have lost population if not for immigrants and births outpacing death,” Fast Company reported.
In the last 50 years, 12 states in the Southeast added 33 seats in the House of Representatives while the Northeast and Midwest lost virtually the same number of seats.
11 of the 21 most important committees in the House are now chaired by members coming from the South, Bloomberg Government estimated.
In 2022, GOP Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott of Texas, and Brian Kemp handily won reelection.