IRS data show Minnesota losing residents in every age category
Yesterday, I wrote about Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data that show Minnesota losing, on net, 13,455 residents in 2021-2022.
A common response to such data is that these are just retirees seeking sunnier climates and so, for some reason, do not matter. But, as I’ve written before, this isn’t actually true.
Figure 1 breaks down Minnesota’s total loss net loss of residents for 2021-2022 into six age categories. We see that our state lost residents, on net, in every single one of them. Indeed, people aged under 45 account for 40.8% of the overall loss.
Figure 1: Net migration of individuals to/from Minnesota by age, 2021-2022
Perhaps the argument that a loss of retirees doesn’t matter is based on the idea that losing non-workers is no bad thing. If so, the data show that the idea is wrong and, once again, we see the impact of our ongoing exodus of residents on Minnesota’s workforce.