Detroit’s example might be the most obvious, but Motor City is just one of cities with the highest out migration in America. While most cities and towns across the states are showcasing steady, and even speedy growth rates, there are those that have shown the signs of decline over the last few years. We will not delve too much into the reasons why cities are losing population. We’ll only present you with the list of top 10 US cities with negative migration rates. Some reasons, however, are clear by themselves.
Cities with highest out migration are actually cities with highest negative net migration. This means that these cities have recorded the largest losses through both international and domestic migrations. This, however, doesn’t mean that these cities’ total population has declined. On the contrary – some of them have even managed to grow. This is the result of the natural change which is the difference between newborn and deceased people over a select period. So, with that in mind, we’ll only take into account the difference between exclusively negative domestic migration rates and fluctuating international migration rates. You can also take a look at this list of 21 biggest cities in the US by 2014 population, and see how many of them are losing population through highly negative net migration.
Our data has been pulled from Governing’s webpage which displays migration rates among other data. They have observed both immigration (movement of people into designated country or city) and emigration (the act of leaving one’s country or city of residence) for the time frame between 2010 and 2013. They have made an observation that during that time around 3 million people moved into US metro areas from abroad or rural areas. International migration doesn’t consider only immigrants. It also includes natives returning to the states and their family members as well. Some cities have benefited from these movements, while others came out short. It’s no secret that northern states are generally losing their population in favor of Sun Belt states in the South. That migration pattern within the US has been established some time ago, and it’s still going strong. It will come as no surprise then, that most of the metro areas from this list of 10 cities with the highest out migration in America are from the north of US. In fact, if you divide the country down the middle by latitude, you’ll see that all metro areas from the list apart from one are north of this line. Now, some metro areas have been losing their population for a long while, and this trend threatens them still. The depressed economy is usually the reason, and we all know that the likes of Detroit and Cleveland have applied themselves in trying to stimulate growth. They are still unsuccessful, but fortunately, things are looking for the better. Being large cities, they, at least, receive a number of immigrants that are trying to balance the scales and negate the enormous out migration. Some smaller communities, however, aren’t that lucky, and not only that they exhibit negative natural change – they also showcase negative net migration rates. Let us now move on to the list itself.