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Notes -
When people move long distances in the US, their primary consideration seems to be "jobs". But what does that actually operationalize to for people who aren't professionals or otherwise in some extremely niche industry? Let's say you don't hope for much more than working at Costco or maybe as an administrative assistant at some small business, or as some random entry-level lab technician. What sort of metrics are you even supposed to look at when deciding on a destination?
Something like income per capita or unemployment rate seem too crude to be useful. Perhaps Region A has higher income per capita than Region B because of a thriving industry (e.g., diesel engine manufacturing) that has no relevance to your skills.
A random snapshot of job listings on indeed.com seems too unrepresentative. Job openings come and go all the time, and it seems unwise to write off a whole area because the current job openings don't suit you.
A region's level of educational attainment seems meaningless, except perhaps for some highly skilled professions, because a less-educated region has fewer workers who might compete for the white collar job you want. And it doesn't seem obvious to me that less-education regions would have fewer white collar jobs relative to the population of qualified candidates.
A region's rate of growth seems irrelevant. What's the difference between a region that has grown 30% in the last decade from 100,000 to 130,000 to a region that has grown only 10% in the last decade from 118,000 to 130,000? If it's because there's something more desirable or economically healthy about the former, then look at that metric and skip the middleman. (And what is that metric, and why does it matter for the prospective mover?)
Most Americans who move in pursuit of ‘some job or other, they’re better where I’m going to’ are not doing mathematical analysis, they’re relying on word of mouth that is actually mostly social media these days.
As an example, oil booms in the US- like the North Dakota sand tar boom or the midland-Odessa boom in Texas- generate lots of men(women seem to accurately assess that unless they are sex workers, a town made up mostly of blue collar males is unlikely to be to their advantage) moving in to try to take advantage of a perceived unskilled labor shortage in industries that roughnecks are thought to create high demand in(eg fast food) by asking for high wages. This can actually spread out pretty far; Midland, Texas has historically been a top destination for barbers, who reason quite accurately that large amounts of imported male blue collar labor needs lots of basic haircuts which the town’s permanent economy can’t provide.
You also have another effect, where individuals from poor regions(like Acadiana or the Ozarks) move to more economically prosperous regions(like DFW or Houston) to seek training in low prestige skills(like phlebotomy or garage door repair) in the hope that they’ll gain access to local alumni networks which will get them a job that less prosperous regions can’t support as easily.
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