America’s 10 Least Affordable Metro Areas All Located in Forced-Unionism States
Forced-unionism propagandists like to boast about nominal pay rates in Big Labor-dominated cities like New York, San Francisco and Boston. But once these metropolises’ extraordinarily high living costs are taken into consideration, it turns out that the paychecks of residents of such union-boss strongholds don’t go very far. Image: Trulia, Santa Monica Property Blog.
What’s the reason for the massive and ongoing net out-migration of residents from forced-unionism states such as California, New York, and New Jersey? Â From April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012 alone, even as overall domestic migration was subdued as a result of the lingering impact of the Great Recession, a net total of 104,000 people left California for other states. Â The Empire State’s net population loss over the same period stemming from net domestic out-migration was 224,ooo, while the Garden State’s was 103,ooo.
Economic analysts of migration patterns such as Harvard’s Edward Glaeser point to extraordinarily high housing costs in California and a number of states in the Northeast, and restrictive land-use policies that contribute greatly to those high costs.
But Census data show that young adults in their career-building years make up a disproportionately large share of the net out-migration from California, New York, and New Jersey. Â If the wages and salaries earned by young employees in these forced-unionism states were high enough to make up for high housing costs in particular and a generally high cost of living, it seems highly unlikely that a high cost of living in itself would lead to high net out-migration.
Writing for The Atlantic this week (see the link above), journalist Emily Badger points out that the seemingly high nominal wages and salaries for employees in major metropolitan areas in California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are in fact insufficient to buy the vast majority of the houses on the market in these areas. Â America’s 10 least affordable metro areas when both median wages and local prices are taken into account are listed in the chart reprinted here. Â All of them are located in forced-unionism states.
Forced unionism does not always lead to high housing costs and a high overall cost of living, but regional differences in cost of living must be taken into consideration in any credible effort  to compare living standards in Right to Work and forced-unionism states.  Unfortunately, many Big Labor apologists do not even try to account for disparate living costs in comparing incomes in Right to Work and non-Right to Work states, and others try to minimize the disparity through statistical legerdemain.  In both cases, the data derived are of little or no use for citizens trying to make a fair assessment of relative living standards in Right to Work and forced-unionism states.