Where America Is Moving

In recent years, some smaller cities have been able to compete with larger areas — such as New York City and San Francisco — as places for entrepreneurs to start new businesses.

Penske, the US-based truck leasing giant, has released its 2012 list of most popular moving destinations. For at least the third year in a row, Atlanta is No. 1. Dallas returned to No. 2 after falling back to No. 4 last year. Otherwise, these same 10 cities have dominated since at least 2010.

Guest post from Natalie Soroka, Economist in the Office of Industry Analysis within the International Trade Administration2011 was a good year for U.S. Metropolitan Area Exporters. Of the 367 metro areas with available data (due to Federal disclosure regulations), 206 saw record-high merchandise exports in 2011. Overall, exports from all metropolitan areas increased by 16 percent from 2010 to total $1.31 trillion in 2011. New York was the top exporter, accounting for $105.1 billion. While export value is concentrated in the top metro areas (like New York, Houston, and Los Angeles), exports are an important economic driver nationwide. In 2011, 150 metro areas exported more than $1 billion of goods, thirteen of which reached this mark for the first time.Overall, many areas experienced significant export growth in 2011, with exports increasing by more than $1 billion in 36 metro areas. Larger exporters such as Houston and New York showed the highest dollar growth, each growing by more than $20 billion compared to the previous year, but growth was not contained to big cities. Of the top 50 metro exporters in 2011, Corpus Christi showed the fastest growth, nearly doubling its goods exports since 2010. Much of this growth, along with other fast-rising metropolitan areas in Texas and Louisiana, was due to higher exports of petroleum and coal products. Higher commodity prices benefitted many cities in 2011, with major exporters of crops (Minneapolis, New Orleans, Portland), primary metals (Salt Lake City, New York), and petroleum and coal products (Houston, New Orleans, New York, Corpus Christi) showing high growth. In addition to commodities, exporters of manufactured goods such as chemicals (Houston) and transportation equipment (Detroit) showed high growth in 2011.

From the WSJ:Inside the $15 trillion machine that is U.S. economy are dozens of metropolitan economies, from New York to Honolulu, that are the real pistons and gears of U.S. growth and prosperity. So how do those individual economies stack up against the world?

AMERICANS are much more willing to move around within their great continental expanse than residents of other countries are to migrate. As the chart at right indicates, migration across state lines is far more common than is movement across Australian territories, Canadian provinces, or regions within the typical euro-area economy—and vastly more so than across national borderns within the EU.