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1. I strongly recommend that at least one of you secures employment before moving. There is all this happy talk about "Ohio rebounding" and this and that, but I know plenty of degreed professionals in the Cols metro who've had their hours cut or totally lost their jobs and haven't been able to secure even a minimum wage job. The job areas that are hot are truck driving, especially hauling related to nat'l gas fracking (google it) and specialized logistics and upper level factory work (maintain robots at Honda).
2. The humidity up here is much less. There is generally about six weeks between July and August where Cols will get some "Ozone" (pollution alert) days and the air will be dank and horrid! But it's rare to have weeks of ongoing oppressive humidity, plus the pollen count for many plants is a lot lower. There's grass and ragweed pollen but NC natives have reported feeling a lot better more days of the year.
I like Raleigh a lot! I may retire down there, but there are very few jobs in my field.
As I've been suggesting on other threads, c'mon up for a long weekend. You can fly into Port Columbus, rent a car, and explore the area. Three days will give you a good feel for how well you'll do here. Try to have several interviews lined up. There's a lot to see, but three days will give you an excellent overview.
Ohio has never been in population decline and is not now. Slow growth is not no growth, and considering it's 7th in population, it's not exactly an empty wasteland to begin with.
NC has benefitted largely from economic issues in the North, but much of those problems don't exist anymore or are well in the process of going away. Ohio and other "Rust Belt" states are significantly more economically diverse than they once were, and beyond lagging population trends in some cities, the state is moving in the right direction now.
I hate the South's weather, personally. If it's not the heat, it's way too much sunshine. I never thought I could be so sick of sunshine, but when you have it day after day for 8 months of the year, you crave anything different. At least, I do. Give me 4 seasons. Give me cloudy days.
Please see my second post where I qualify the growth statement and clarify that the Rust Belt is experiencing below-trend growth with many of the college educated youth fleeing the State of Ohio upon graduation (the governor has mentioned the need to stem the bleeding in years past).
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbcmh81
Is that why the Sun Belt generally has higher unemployment, slower job growth, worse upward mobility, higher cost of living, worse infrastructure, worse education rankings, lower income levels, etc? High population growth doesn't change any of that. No one is saying Ohio is perfect, but come on. The Sun Belt is hardly the utopia you're trying to make it out to be.
Hopefully you know that the unemployment rate isn't the clear-cut standard bearer statistic it is treated as such in the media. There are two components to the unemployment rate, a numerator (number unemployed) and a denominator (labor force). The Sun Belt, sans Florida, tends to be younger than the Rust Belt. More retired persons in the Rust Belt translates to a lower labor force and a lower unemployment rate statistic. I disagree that there is worse upward mobility and worse infrastructure in the Sun Belt. These two things lend themselves to ambiguity in defining exactly what is to be measured and are rather subjective at that. I presume you have some long-term statistic you can reference regarding your claim of slower job growth? Not looking for something that measures a year or two but rather a multi-decade trend. I also assume you have a multi-decadal data source you can highlight regarding income levels and does it break it down by rural versus urban? I'd have to believe a doctor in Atlanta makes roughly the equivalent as a doctor in Columbus or Indianapolis. Much of what you inevitably reference is sure to vary based on occupation and rural versus urban.
The multi-decade trend is what I have been citing during this dialog. Again, anyone can data fit a year or two to fit their personal biases and agenda but the trend dating back to the 1990s has been for population shifts to move to the South and West as the Rust Belt and Northeast see slower growth. Just for example Southwest Ohio has seen both NCR and Chiquita flee Ohio for Atlanta and Charlotte respectively. Hyundai, Daimler Benz, and Toyota have moved factories to Alabama and business professors have cited lack of a history of labor unions as one of the reasons why. These are just a handful of the trends that have occurred over the last decade or two.
1. I strongly recommend that at least one of you secures employment before moving. There is all this happy talk about "Ohio rebounding" and this and that, but I know plenty of degreed professionals in the Cols metro who've had their hours cut or totally lost their jobs and haven't been able to secure even a minimum wage job. The job areas that are hot are truck driving, especially hauling related to nat'l gas fracking (google it) and specialized logistics and upper level factory work (maintain robots at Honda).
As I've been suggesting on other threads, c'mon up for a long weekend. You can fly into Port Columbus, rent a car, and explore the area. Three days will give you a good feel for how well you'll do here. Try to have several interviews lined up. There's a lot to see, but three days will give you an excellent overview.
Name one city in any state where you can't find people with the same stories at any time in the past 5 years. This is not an Ohio or specific city issue. Actually, you could probably find those people in 1999-2000 when unemployment was 2.5%.
Please see my second post where I qualify the growth statement and clarify that the Rust Belt is experiencing below-trend growth with many of the college educated youth fleeing the State of Ohio upon graduation (the governor has mentioned the need to stem the bleeding in years past).
Hopefully you know that the unemployment rate isn't the clear-cut standard bearer statistic it is treated as such in the media. There are two components to the unemployment rate, a numerator (number unemployed) and a denominator (labor force). The Sun Belt, sans Florida, tends to be younger than the Rust Belt. More retired persons in the Rust Belt translates to a lower labor force and a lower unemployment rate statistic. I disagree that there is worse upward mobility and worse infrastructure in the Sun Belt. These two things lend themselves to ambiguity in defining exactly what is to be measured and are rather subjective at that. I presume you have some long-term statistic you can reference regarding your claim of slower job growth? Not looking for something that measures a year or two but rather a multi-decade trend. I also assume you have a multi-decadal data source you can highlight regarding income levels and does it break it down by rural versus urban? I'd have to believe a doctor in Atlanta makes roughly the equivalent as a doctor in Columbus or Indianapolis. Much of what you inevitably reference is sure to vary based on occupation and rural versus urban.
The multi-decade trend is what I have been citing during this dialog. Again, anyone can data fit a year or two to fit their personal biases and agenda but the trend dating back to the 1990s has been for population shifts to move to the South and West as the Rust Belt and Northeast see slower growth. Just for example Southwest Ohio has seen both NCR and Chiquita flee Ohio for Atlanta and Charlotte respectively. Hyundai, Daimler Benz, and Toyota have moved factories to Alabama and business professors have cited lack of a history of labor unions as one of the reasons why. These are just a handful of the trends that have occurred over the last decade or two.
You act as if college educated people were the single group leaving the North. Just about every demographic has been, including high school dropouts and welfare queens. It is not quite as simple as everyone worth anything leaving and only uneducated losers staying behind. College graduates followed the same long-term trends as all other groups, so to make it specific ignores the overall context of what was happening. No one should be suprised by what has been going on, though you also can't argue that the recession certainly equalized things a bit between the regions. The North has been diversifying for a long time and that is just now starting to show some positive feedback. Whether it stems college graduate losses specifically, I don't know, but I would imagine that all the state would have to really worry about is slowing domestic population loss in general and more graduates would be retained.
For the record, here are 2 state rates for the population aged 25 and over that have a graduate degree.
Ohio: 8.9%
NC: 8.7%
I know that, that's why I didn't just talk about the unemployment rate. What's interesting about the labor force is that NC's has indeed grown the past year (+83,000) while Ohio's has fallen (-53,000). Yet in the same time Ohio has created more jobs (+90,700) than NC (+72,600). NC wasn't even able to create enough jobs to match the labor force increase, let alone for those already in it. BTW, Ohio's labor force decline is over and jumped over 11,000 in January.
Yes, many states in the South are younger, but not just because of domestic migration. Hispanic populations, which skew younger, hit there first for obvious reasons. I also see you don't mention that the highest growth rates in senior citizen populations are in the Sun Belt. Those states are getting older faster, though they are starting out younger.
Worse infrastructure may be a somewhat ambiguous point, but it's not really all that logical to assume high rates of growth are good for maintaining efficient infrastructure. Here's a link with commute times by state, which is at least a more solid basepoint: United States - Average Commute Time by State The Southeast has higher commute times, which would logically suggest more traffic due to insufficient infrastructure to handle volume.
If you want income from rural vs city, I have this link: Brookings - Quality. Independence. Impact. It lists many things, but it has income levels by state, metro, city and suburb through 2000. If you want earlier than that, try the BLS or the Census. In any case, according to the Census, in 2011, Ohio had a higher median income than: Florida, NC, SC, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas and Mississippi. Only Virginia, Texas and Georgia were higher, though Texas and Georgia not significantly so.
What makes you think that those population shifts are permanent, exactly? Is there any precedence for a population boom that never ended, or a migration pattern that didn't shift? The Sun Belt boom coincided with the collapse of Northern manufacturing and the rise of the suburban movement. Economics trumps all else, and for many years, the South was simply in better shape. But to suggest that there are no signs that things are changing is just nonsense.
NCR was a loss, but Chiquita? Didn't they just lose a few hundred million last year? Good luck with that, NC. Meanwhile, Honda basically just put its North American headquarters in Marysville and the state is still the base of their operations. You want to rag on Ohio while ignoring all the problems of places you enjoy promoting, but Ohio is not the hellhole you're making it out to be, not even close.
Stay in NC. Columbus is boring. It's like a giant mall. Want to spend Friday nights shopping at the Gap and getting dinner at TGI Fridays? Then it's the town for you.
For the record, I am fully aware Columbus has plenty of other eateries. The point of the above is to demonstrate the over-commercialized nature of this city-without-a-pulse.
Stay in NC. Columbus is boring. It's like a giant mall. Want to spend Friday nights shopping at the Gap and getting dinner at TGI Fridays? Then it's the town for you.
For the record, I am fully aware Columbus has plenty of other eateries. The point of the above is to demonstrate the over-commercialized nature of this city-without-a-pulse.
Haters gonna hate. Downvote me all you want.
Every city has suburbia and areas with local eateries and flare. The thing one must judge is the affordability of the area with great flare and local restaurants. Where I previously lived in Houston, Texas to live in an area with local and unique restaurants would run my wife and I half a million dollars and up. We are currently living in a great area of Columbus with wonderful local restaurants that we can walk to and it cost us a third of that price. Life is what you make of it and Columbus is a great town with lots to do. Seek out and find these places. I just found another great local place on Friday night.
Also, I spent a week in Charlotte and it seemed more commercialized than most places I have been in the US. It reminded me a lot of Houston, TX. Chain restaurants and lots of new town homes. I had a great time in Charlotte but it is not much different than any of the later developing Southern cities. Lots of new stuff and lots of new people to the area.
Lots of reasons for this, and not all based on the merits of the places that grew.
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