$200B Loss as Taxpayers Flee Forced-Unionism States

From a CNS Op-Ed by Stan Greer, National Institute for Labor Relations Research senior research associate: Forced-Unionism States Face $200B Income Loss as Taxpayers Flee Slow-Growth States.  Click here to read the full CNSNews.com piece.

For decades, hardworking taxpayers have been fleeing the slow-growth states that permit the firing of employees for refusal to bankroll an unwanted union (now 23 in number) and relocating in faster-growth Right to Work states, where such firings are prohibited. And thanks to data furnished by the Statistics of Income (SOI) division of the IRS, it is possible to calculate the sum total of wages, salaries, and other income taxpayers take with them when they flee.

Moreover, all of the seven states (New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, California and Ohio) suffering the worst losses of income, in absolute terms, due to taxpayer out-migration from 2015 to 2016 lack Right to Work laws.

Over the past five years for which SOI data are available, these Big Labor-dominated states collectively lost a total of $96.3 billion (2017 dollars) in adjusted gross income.

States without Right to Work laws are now on track to lose roughly $200 billion in income to domestic out-migration over the course of this decade, or 30 percent more (in constant dollars) than they lost during the first decade of the millennium.