While New York and California are losing population, states like South Carolina and Alabama are not only gaining residents at a record rate, but they are also experiencing rapid economic growth.
A recent JL Partners poll captures a shift in perception: 36 percent of Americans now expect the South to lead economic growth over the next decade - far ahead of the West Coast (23 percent), Northeast (21 percent), and Midwest (19 percent). This is quite a transformation. For as long as anyone can remember, the South seemed to be a by word for backwardness. Since the late nineteenth century, American commerce and industry centered on the traditional business hubs of New York, Chicago, and California. Each successive wave of innovation - automobile manufacturing and aerospace, chemicals and consumer goods, financial services and digital startups - seemed to happen outside the South. Starting in the 1980s an initial wave of ‘Sun belt’ states, like Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, began to prosper. But what you might call the ‘core’ southern states, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina, remain resolutely stuck in the slow lane. Until now. Over the past decade, economic growth in the South has exceeded the national average, and in states like Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina, significantly so. Real GDP in 2024 rose 4.2% in Mississippi and South Carolina, 3.8% in Alabama and Arkansas, and 3.0% in Tennessee, surpassing the national rate of 2.8%. Manufacturing jobs might have disappeared in the Rust Belt, but many of those jobs went South, not to China. U.S. industrial output has roughly doubled since the Reagan era, and much of that expansion happened in states like Alabama which has added over 50,000 auto jobs since 2000 while Michigan lost them. Combined, Alabama and Mississippi now produce more vehicles annually than Italy or the United Kingdom. The South is not just a manufacturing powerhouse - it's rapidly emerging as a major financial service center. Think "Y'all Street" rather than Wall Street. Cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Miami, and even Nashville have become financial hubs in ways that once seemed unimaginable. This shift is so pronounced that JPMorgan Chase now employs more people in Texas (around 31,000) than in New York. So strong has southern growth been that between 2020 and 2024, 78 percent of all US jobs added to the economy have been located in the South. The population of the South has increased by seven million since 2020. If anything, this shift in population to the South seems to be accelerating. According to the 2026 HireAHelper Moving Migration Report, for every 10,000 residents, in 2025 South Carolina gained 79 more people, Tennessee 47, Alabama 36 and Mississippi 18. New York, by contrast, lost 28, California lost 25 and Washington state lost 10.
Even as America's college-age population shrinks due to lower birth rates, Southeastern Conference (SEC) universities are bucking the trend with rising applications, especially from out-of-state Northeastern students. Between 2014 and 2023, SEC schools saw a 91 percent surge in undergraduates from out of state. These students aren't just chasing sunshine and football; many seek a campus culture that is the antithesis of northeastern or Westcoast woke. Unsurprisingly, the JL Partners survey found young graduates particularly bullish on the South's prospects, with nearly four in ten naming it the region most likely to grow fastest in the coming decade. What explains this southern success? Southern states are not just more friendly. They are business friendly. Taxes tend to be lower. Some southern states have no income tax (such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee), or like Mississippi and South Carolina, are on the road to income tax elimination. State income taxes are higher elsewhere, with Washington state, for example, about to introduce an income-tax for the first time. Southern states tend to have less red tape. South Carolina recently repealed a lot of the so-called Certificate of Need red tape that held back the healthcare economy. Contrast that to California, now one of the most stringent regulatory environments in the U.S with onerous compliance requirements of companies for example on climate disclosure and environmental standards. Southern states have more flexible labor laws, and most are right-to-work states, meaning workers cannot be required to join unions. Southern states, like Mississippi, have begun to remove restrictive occupational licensing rules, too, making it easier for people to find work. The South has significantly lower electricity costs on average largely because the South never really took the Biden era inducements to take up renewable energy. Ironically, given that the sun belt is where the sunshine is, the South avoids prescriptive renewable mandates, while making practical use of solar power. In contrast, the Northeast and California have stringent renewable mandates and face higher prices as a consequence. The secret of America’s success is having fifty different states trying out different policy solutions side by side. The southern states seem to have found a winning formula. Douglas Carswell is the President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He was previously a Member of the British Parliament. Mr. Carswell authored this post.
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4 comments:
I think the south has become the preferred destination of business not because things are so good here but because things are so bad in other states. Nevertheless, our future looks very bright if we can keep the democrats from doing here what they have done everywhere else.
To be honest New Hampshire is growing like wildfire as well. It’s all to do with the taxes… or lack there of. California is a great place to be from but no longer live… once a thriving beautiful state unlike any other. Then the leftist ruined it and are bailing on what they once voted for. Nashville is about to be ruined like Austin Texas and Denver were by these white rich elites (Democrats)
Buy investment property in Jackson before it is too late. Don’t rehab it enough to raise the value. Just stop the termites and hobos from destroying it. Then when the time is right you get it rental-ready for all these young families of workers who will be flooding in to the region.
Free advice!
coming back home from North Alabama/Huntsville via Nashville, we're so far behind and both sides of the aisle are morons with no logical ideas to truly prosper. Poster above is correct about Nashville and Huntsville is next. Outsiders never acclimate to the South, they're compelled to make it soiled like their native lands.
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