North Dakota’s economic performance and success is not news anymore. Well, alright, its news, but most people know about it. I have given interviews to media outlets around the country and the world about it, as have many others. So it is not a secret. So if there was an economic motive to migration, and there often is, people already know about it. Here is a graph of ND population change, migration in, and migration out. I calculate migration out as the difference between migration in and total population change.
Housing: Here, There & Everywhere
Housing issues of all sorts are a hot topic nationally, not just in Grand Forks or North Dakota. I thought we could look at price levels for three different geographic regions. The first is the Grand Forks metro area since that is one of the topics most frequently mentioned in my appearances on the Jarrod Thomas Show (1310 KNOX radio in Grand Forks). The next area is North Dakota and the last is the United States as a whole.
Inflated Worries
Being a frequent contributor to the Jarrod Thomas Show (1310 KNOX AM, Grand Forks) over the last several years I received many questions about inflation. The massive monetary stimulus injected by the Fed in response to the Great Recession “must” be inflationary. Many callers believed there was no way to avoid a massive inflation as an outcome.
Labor Trends in Grand Forks MSA
The growth occurring in North Dakota as a whole, and in most of the sub regions within the states, is quite impressive as media stories no doubt impart. Being a dismal scientist I pointed out many times here and on the Jarrod Thomas Show (1310 KNOX AM, shameless plug I know) that the growth in the oil patch represented a potential constraint on growth in communities like Grand Forks. While many disagreed with me I offer up the following trends that should give people pause.
Updated the Description Page
I updated the explanation in the “About the title” page for a few people that asked for more information about my lecture on the topic of barter, and it being evil.