Are your customers coming or going?

Business owners need to know something about the people that are their customers or could be their customers. Over the last few decades there has been a decided shift from the north and north east to the south, and in recent years people have been leaving California for other areas. This chart by the Pew Research Center describes illustrates migration flows since 1975. The recent housing bubble and collapse has exacerbated these movements, and as this article in Reuters explains, the Midwestern manufacturing states may recover from the housing crisis more slowly than the Southern states.

Graphic representation really puts these movements into perspective. Check out this interactive map from Forbes showing movement from one county to another in 2008. The outflows from Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles startling. The inflows to Atlanta, Dallas, Manhattan, and Seattle are equally startling. It is not hard to figure out which would be the best places to grow a business. You can find the migration for your own county in 2008, by clicking on your county.