Is this really a surprise? (fit in, real estate, apartments)

[thomjoe]

North Dakota ranks second in the nation and first in the Upper Midwest in residents moving out of their state, according to a 2007 migration study.

United Van Lines, the nation's largest household mover, has tracked shipment patterns annually for each state since 1977.

For 2007, the accounting is based on the 212,917 interstate household moves handled by United among the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C.

Company Vice President Carl Walter said that the study, through the years, has been shown to accurately reflect the general migration patterns around the nation. He added that real estate firms, financial institutions and other observers of relocation trends regularly use United's data in their business planning and analysis activities.

Elsewhere in the Upper Midwest, according to the study:

Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota had more shipments into their respective states than outbound shipments. Wisconsin, however, had more outbounds than inbounds.

For North Dakota, United handled 1,407 shipments in 2007, with 67.2 percent being outbound. Only Michigan had a higher percentage of its shipments being outbound (67.8).

[chester]

No, I am not surprised at all. Anyone knows you can't take the numbers from one moving company to reflect the numbers of an entire nation, let alone one state. Wow, out of 212,917 interstate moves, only 1,407...I mean 1,407 were to and from ND. and 67.2% of the 1.407 were outbounds, which means they moved about 942 househoulds out of ND. Those are some really HUGE numbers....NOT! When you have a small population, the percentages become greatly exaggerated. Did you know that if you come from a a small town of 2 people, and one of the persons in this town has cancer... then 50% of the population in this town have cancer.? United is not the only moving company that moves people to and from ND, I guess I would need to see ALL moving companies statistics on ND before I get to excited. It is possible that United is the major moving company in ND. What others are there? Allied is the only other I could think of. I think I will take the census bureau's estimates before Uniteds. But I believe it is possible that ND is not a major inbound destination for Uniteds customers. People moving into western ND's booming energy patch (for example) are probably using other moving companies other than United to move INTO the state.

[Corbay]

I heard about this news, but I could swear within the last few weeks that U-Haul had the exact opposite figures.

Can't seem to find a link.

[Roloff1976]

Yeah...I agree...it is nothing about nothing...totally exagerated numbers. When you look at the outbound of 942 out of 1407 total moves...that means an inbound of 465... so the difference of the outbound and inbound is 477. That is definately not very big number at all. The small numbers definately exegerate the percentages. Besides, I agree that you can't decide the inbound/outbound of an entire state based on 1 moving company. This is just their own company numbers.

[magiccity]

Good Morning America,
Another factor that is not considered is that United Van Lines has a contract with the military base. Those numbers reflect all moving to and from military bases and since ND has two major bases, guess what, of course you'll have incoming and outgoing. Also, those being transferred out came in as single airman. After moving here with their worldly possessions in the back seat of a car, married their home town sweet heart and now you have a household of furniture and children. Why move it yourself when the gov't will do it for you. It would be interesting if United Van Lines would give only the numbers of non-military moves.

[Roloff1976]

Good point Magic city!

[fourwinds]

Originally Posted by magiccity

Good Morning America,
Another factor that is not considered is that United Van Lines has a contract with the military base. Those numbers reflect all moving to and from military bases and since ND has two major bases, guess what, of course you'll have incoming and outgoing. Also, those being transferred out came in as single airman. After moving here with their worldly possessions in the back seat of a car, married their home town sweet heart and now you have a household of furniture and children. Why move it yourself when the gov't will do it for you. It would be interesting if United Van Lines would give only the numbers of non-military moves.

That's true for students too. When they move to a University setting like UND or NDSU (both have more than 50% out of state students) from out of state, their possessions can fit in a car. When they move back out of state with their career, they've often acquired furniture after living in apartments which their new employer will pay to move.

Oil workers come to ND with almost nothing, but leave with a lot more material goods.

Another issues is that with snowbird retirements, some ND's move much of their possessions to Arizona (as an example), but still live in ND for much of the year.

[alaska315]

Please remember that we have several military bases in ND and I am sure many of those moves are dierctly related.