Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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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?)
I can't find any clearly great data on this, but I would wager that when people move long distances in the U.S., their primary consideration is a job--like, one they have already been offered. While I have known a few people who went somewhere looking for opportunities, it seems much more common, in my experience, to have a job offer, or at least a somewhat specific lead. The main exception seems to be when people have a landing pad in the form of friends or family.
This survey is not limited to long distance moves, but the question "what brought you here" gets the answer "family" almost 1/3rd of the time--followed closely by "I grew up here" (27%) and then "job" at just 14%. Interestingly, the two biggest hypothetical reasons people imagine would get them to leave their current residence is "a new job elsewhere" followed closely by "the opportunity to move to my dream city"--which, realistically for most people, means "a new job in my dream city."
In other words, very few Americans "decid[e] on a destination" as a matter of primary consideration. Rather, people tend to make decisions based on what is familiar (geography, family) while possibly keeping an open mind should sufficiently good opportunities become available elsewhere.
The main exception to this seems to be people whose circumstances (wealth, retirement, remote work) permit them to live more or less wherever they want--in which case again, family and friends would be primary considerations, along with stuff like leisure, culture, housing prices, etc. In such cases, jobs are not generally at issue, so the relevant metrics will be highly dependent on individual preferences.
So to your question:
I would answer, "whichever metrics happen to matter to your personal case." If all you're doing is launching yourself somewhere else on a proverbial wing and a prayer, though... I don't know. If you're not independently wealthy, I feel like this would be a huge risk to take. Maybe find a place that seems likely to have some demand for the skills you personally possess?
The whole reason I ask is because I'm moving to the US from Canada later this year to be with my significant other, who is American. She currently works in Buffalo so she can drive to be with me weekly when not working. We want to move to a Red state, but neither of us have job offers or family (at least not family that we'd want to move to be near). I have no work history besides my BA degree and no idea what I want to do; she has a BA in biology and a work history as a lab tech.
It's easy enough to find a decent state (pretty much any red Midwest state, in our case). The real daunting task is finding a place within a state. Ruling out large cities because of personal preference, that still leaves dozens of cities per state. I'm having trouble figuring out how to systematically filter these hundreds of possibilities. The options that come to mind (e.g., income per capita, growth rate, and other things I've mentioned) don't seem obviously important to me, but I could be wrong. I have no experience in this area.
This sounds like an analogous problem to the way my wife and I chose a London neighborhood to buy a house and settle down in. (Any given Midwestern state has a population of the same order of magnitude as Greater London). Key points:
Know what you want - for us it was a manageable commute to Central London, houses with gardens affordable on a UMC salary, and proximity to woodlands for walking.
Know what you don't want that other people are willing to pay a premium for, and avoid it. I grew up using London commuter trains, so I wasn't willing to pay a premium to live on the Underground network. Given that other people are willing to pay a large premium for this, we could rule out any neighbourhood with a tube station as poor value for money. Obviously relevant examples are good schools if you are not planning to have kids (or are planning to homeschool), walkability if you are happy living in American auto-orientated suburbia, a lack of rush hour traffic if you work remotely.
Make a shortlist of suitable towns based on your criteria. You are doing internet research at this point unless you can ask someone who lives in the general area. Relying on stereotypes is fine - most stereotypes are mostly accurate.
Visit the places on the shortlist, walk around a lot, try to understand who lives there (Are they like you? Mostly like you with less money is also okay. Mostly like you with more money is dangerous unless you are early-career and expecting large payrises), do the things that matter to you (hiking in the woods for us).
If you experience a "problem with no name" in most or all of your target areas, then one of your criteria is wrong and you need to go back to step 1. After looking at some outer-suburban neighborhoods in SE London we realised that we cared about neighborhood walkability more than having a large garden, and went back to more inner-suburban neighborhoods with smaller gardens. (We now live in Greenwich, and love it. The small garden is quite large enough for the kids and we do indeed have a wooded park which the kids will be able to walk to on their own by the time they outgrow the garden).
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