Where Do People Move To When They Move Out Of Lubbock?
I have often said that people from small towns move to Lubbock, then Lubbock people move to bigger towns.
My observation is incredibly simplistic, but it's also spot-on in a lot of ways. People follow opportunity and while it's an upgrade for many small-town folks, there seems to be a ceiling around here for people who really want to grow their careers.
I'm sure some folks would love to call me out for that last observation, but how else would you explain 40,000 college students who come to town with so few of them staying on in the Hub City after? We do not have a big manufacturing base, or many corporate headquarters here, so the true elite have to move on.
Evidence of my claims can be found via Stacker, who crunched the migration numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. With that, it's time to answer the question, "When people move out of Lubbock, where are they moving to?" The answer is "mostly to other places in Texas". Now go ahead and guess at some of the actual cities, and come back after this picture for the answer:
You can no doubt guess the top place people from Lubbock move to, and if you guessed "Dallas" you are correct. I'm also betting you could guess #2 and #3, which are Houston and Austin. From there, the situation gets a bit harder to guess. San Antonio and Amarillo take up spots #4 and #5. I kind of expected that Albequerque which came in at #7 would have scored higher. You can check out the full top 50 locations here.