Between 2021 and 2024, which states did Americans already living in the United States move into, and which did they move out of — measured per 1,000 residents, with international arrivals set aside?
- 1Idaho+55.7 per 1,000 (+111,459 people)
- 2South Carolina+54.7 per 1,000 (+299,962 people)
- 3Montana+44.6 per 1,000 (+50,720 people)
Does not measureThis measures net moves per resident. It does not measure whether a state is a good place to live, and nothing here explains why anyone moved. Six spe…
All 51 and the method →In which jurisdiction does the median job pay the most in raw dollars, before any adjustment for what it costs to live there?
- 1Washington, D.C.$91,540
- 2Massachusetts$63,590
- 3Washington$62,990
Does not measureThis is a NOMINAL wage. It is not adjusted for the cost of living, and this file holds no price-level, rent or regional-price-parity data, so the adju…
All 51 and the method →Which US jurisdictions authorise the most new housing units per 1,000 workers?
- 1Idaho2.0 units per 1,000 workers
- 2South Carolina1.7 units per 1,000 workers
- 3South Dakota1.7 units per 1,000 workers
Does not measureThis counts permission granted, not buildings finished. A permit is an authorisation in the Census Bureau's residential building-permits series; some …
All 51 and the method →Which state governments collect the least tax per resident?
- 1Alaska$2,279 per resident - no individual income tax
- 2New Hampshire$2,393 per resident - no state general sales tax
- 3Florida$2,719 per resident - no individual income tax
Does not measureThis measures state government tax collections only, divided by population. It does not measure what anyone pays, and it does not measure total tax bu…
All 51 and the method →Which state economies are built around an occupation the rest of the country barely has, and which look like everywhere else?
- 1Washington, D.C.122.81× national — Political Scientists
- 2West Virginia46.62× national — Loading and Moving Machine Operators, Underground Mining
- 3Montana35.57× national — Gambling and Sports Book Writers and Runners
Does not measureThis ranks distinctiveness and nothing else. A location quotient measures only how unusual a state's employment mix is against the national mix — it s…
All 51 and the method →Which states added more residents through births than they lost through deaths, and which ones did not?
- 1Utah+27.10 per 1,000 residents
- 2Alaska+18.91 per 1,000 residents
- 3Texas+17.10 per 1,000 residents
Does not measureThis is not a birth rate and not a measure of how well a state is doing. It is births minus deaths, so an older population pushes a state down regardl…
All 51 and the method →When a machine goes looking for a state government's data, which states answer and which return nothing?
- 1Vermont88 / 100 — portal live (data.vermont.gov), 10 datasets, 3 feeds
- 2Washington86 / 100 — portal live (data.wa.gov), 7 datasets, 3 feeds
- 3Virginia84 / 100 — portal live (data.virginia.gov), 21 datasets, 2 feeds
Does not measureThis is CEFA's own measurement, taken in a single month (September 2026), not a federal statistic — no BLS, Census or BEA series stands behind it, and…
All 51 and the method →Why these disagree
Idaho leads on both domestic movers and housing authorised, and sits nowhere near the top on pay. The District of Columbia leads on median pay and on occupational distinctiveness while losing residents to other states faster than almost anywhere. Utah leads on births over deaths and appears in no other top three. These are not contradictions to be resolved into a single score — they are seven different questions, and a composite that averaged them would mostly measure how the averaging was done.
That is not a hypothetical concern. The composite index on this site was tested against where Americans actually move and turned out not to predict it at all, while a single one of its inputs — housing authorised — predicts it strongly. See also the verified findings.
