No less than two million people ditched America’s largest urban centers and moved to more rural scenery from 2020 to 2022.
Suburbs and smaller cities began to be favored more than America’s big cities during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. But even after the health emergency receded, the exodus appears to have developed into a trend.
First, over 1.2 million people packed their bags and left large urban American counties between July 2020 and July 2021, in the early stages of the Corona-virus pandemic, a report published by the Economic Innovation Group stated.
Some 860,000 people changed their place of residence for more rural settings between July 2021 and July 2022.
Accordingly, the decline in the population of urban counties continues, with the rate of domestic out-migration registered as above the figures in the years before COVID-19.
Economic geography data in the report shows that in 2022, large urban counties did not see a renewed post-pandemic growth spurt overall.
This is despite the arrival of immigrants in big cities. While their influx saved these centers from a dramatic drop in population, 17 of the 25 largest counties in the US saw losses between April 2020 and July 2022.
Meanwhile, smaller urban counties dodged a decline in population in 2022, with growth rates shown to rise to 0.46% from the 0.25% registered in 2021.
According to recent data from Kastle Systems, managing office-access security, in 10 of the largest US cities there are chronic office vacancies.
As to the factors behind the trend, while pandemic-related remote work was still regarded by researchers as one of the reasons, surging home prices, rising crime levels in big cities, and other challenges were also seen as feeding into it.
In this episode stats are not counting the ones put in jail or died from overdoses and the likes. The USA has over 10 million people locked up in jail, the largest in the world.
Sputnik / ABC Flash Point WW III Exodus News 2023.
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