Given some of the past conversation on here, I chuckled a bit when I found something in the paper today about census figures for Alaska. Besides the fact that 2/3rds of the people living here were not born here, of new residents in the past 10 years, their point of origin (i.e. the state they moved here from), breaks down like this:

#1 Washington: 114K people
#2 California: 102K people
#3 Texas: 63K people
#4 Oregon: 57K people
#5 Florida: 33K people
#6 Colorado: 32K people

#1 and #4 are straight-forward. It's #2 and #3 that made me chuckle. #5 was surprising mostly, and I dunno what to think about #6. (:

Cheers!
AKDiver

It seems to me that #6 would be fairly straight-forward. I would be a bit worried about #3 and #5. It would be interesting to see the age demographics as well as the leading points of origin that are not within the U.S.

I'm not getting what's surprising about California and Texas.

Read some of the other threads.

It is interesting that Alaska has an immigrant population from other states such as California and Texas. I wonder if the reverse is true as well?

I think there's a couple of things to think about #6, having lived there myself.

You said within the past 10 years. As I recall there was a huge outflow of ENERGY workers from Colorado about 10 years ago as some of the local projects went bust... also these people are used to living in a more mountainous rugged state than most. The weather in Colorado can be a bit extreme at times, though not quite like Alaska of course. And Coloradoans tend to feel like they are the new-frontiersman outdoorsy types anyway, one of the lowest incidences of obesity of any state in America, by the way...

Frankly, numerically it's almost a dead-heat between #5 and #6, but I thought perhaps those factors I mentioned would contribute. And considering that Florida has a larger population to begin with than Colorado...

I think it's also worthy of note that there are a lot of "energy" workers in California and Texas, and as well these are two of the most populous states to begin with... so it only makes sense that two of the most populous states would have the potential for a large population outflow.

I can't really comment on lifestyles of California and Texas, because when I lived in those states, I was in the military... interesting, though, to see if those in the military were included in the new resident figures as well... also there's a large military presence in Colorado as well, so it would be interesting to see if those were included or not...

-- Dan

akdiver,
Overall aren't these numbers way too small to draw any kind of significant conclusion? The article said in the past 10 years.

The conclusion that I got from this thread and the other ones is that AKDiver is basically saying: "Texas and California SUCK!!! Alaska ROCKS!!!! And if you don't like that, GOOD! Stay in Texas and California!"

Or something to that effect.

Not necessarily. If you look at the list it includes three states with one the highest populations in the US: California, Texas, and Florida. These states by their sheer number of people are likely to produce a lot of migration to other states by the normal movement of people. So it would be interesting to see as a whole, what percentage of the total population of all the states listed on that list moved specifically to Alaska. The numbers could easily prove that a very small percentage of all the people that moved from those six states in the last 10 years, moved to Alaska! Thus, one could conclude that of all the states to move to, Alaska is the least desirable.

Believe me, I'd love to jump on the California and Texas bashing bandwagon , but Sattelite is right, the numbers are likely do to the large overall populations in Cali and Texas to begin with.

You guys are probably right.... but you're missing the point:

ALASKA ROCKS!!!!!



(Personally, I've never been anywhere in the States that even comes close to living overseas.)

I think it's possible that when most people think of California they think of the southern half of the state, including the area we all know as Los Angeles.

I have lived in northern California all of my life and would never consider living in the LA area. There's a huge difference between the two.

So yeah, I can see how someone thinking about people from LA would think they wouldn't fit in Alaska, but the northern half of our great state is quite different and I'm not surprised at all to hear about people moving to Alaska (thinking of those from northern CA that is).

Many of my military buddies tried to explain this to me. They were saying that SoCal and NoCal should, in fact, be two seperate states. Most people, also, when introducing themselves and where they're from will say "I'm from Northern California." Or, "I'm from Southern California." And when only stating "I'm from California." That means SoCal. If they're from Northern California, they'll clarify it with a "I'm from the Northern part of the state, not that LA bull$#!^."