The Cities Americans Want to Flee, and Where They Want to Go

> Methodology

> Results are based on searches of Apartment List users occurring between June 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019. We include data from both registered and unregistered users. While registered users are uniquely identified, unregistered users who perform multiple searches may be counted multiple times. For users who search in multiple locations, we consider the initial search location to be the primary one. Each user’s current place of residence is defined by the IP address from which the user is searching. All results are aggregated at the metro level, using Census definitions of metropolitan statistical areas.

I forget what its called, but this is the sample population problem where all of the sample is based on people who voluntarily come to a website. This can substantially skew the results, IIRC.

For example, I can't determine if the study demonstrates the impact of Paradise, California being completely evacuated. It's a bombed out ghost-town and probably 20,000 people have moved some place else, even if to nearby Chico, Red Bluff, Redding, and Sacramento areas.

I also wonder about other factors. California has a looming tax-base problem in that new company formation outside of tech and biotech is slowing, new small businesses creation is slowing, the number of public employee pensioners is rapidly growing and the pension fund is backed up by tax dollars, should the fund lose money in a downturn. Most of the people leaving the state are taxpayers and not government employees and the rate of business exodus continues to grow, even for capital-intensive manufacturers but including large publicly-traded companies such as McKesson.

Gaining a better understanding of who is leaving will provide a far more valuable insight into how this activity is going to affect the state than just broad stats on where people are leaving and where they are going to.