Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Carrie Bakke found a lot to like about living in Arizona, including of course, the sun-baked desert climate.
"Every summer I would question it, and every winter I'd say, 'Oh, yeah, that's why I live here,' " the 30-year-old said.
But when the Phoenix housing market cratered and the Arizona economy fell into a tailspin, her husband's music promotion business took a hit in late 2008. The couple began to wonder whether there were better places to be than the land of the year-round suntan.
It helped bring them to Nebraska earlier this year — and made them part of a new trend. Nebraska is now posting net in-migration of residents from Arizona and Florida — the first time it hasn't lost people to those popular locales in the more than two decades Nebraska demographers have tracked such data.
The numbers continue to show that as the coasts and industrial Midwest suffer disproportionately from the Great Recession, those states' losses have been Nebraska's gain. In the latest data, for 2009, Nebraska also continued its recent migration gains from California, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.
"When you look at the states where we've seen the biggest change, it's those that were hard-hit with housing (price declines) and the economy," said David Drozd, a demographer with the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Center for Public Affairs Research.
Overall, Nebraska during 2009 still had a net loss of about 400 people migrating to other states. But that was after the state was losing as many as 7,800 a year over the previous decade.
And Drozd's modeling suggests that given the recent trend lines, Nebraska is projected to have posted net in-migration of about 1,500 during 2010 — the first time the number would have turned positive since 1996.
Nebraska also posted a net in-migration of 266 people from neighboring Iowa in 2009. That was a reversal of the pre-recession trend, which saw Nebraska lose almost 800 people to the Hawkeye State in 2006.
The trends are a result of more people moving into Nebraska from other states as well as fewer people leaving for those other places.
The figures come from the Internal Revenue Service, which compares where households file their tax returns from one year to the next. UNO's Center for Public Affairs Research has been analyzing the annual data since 1989.
Nebraska had lost a net of residents to the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Florida and Georgia in all 20 years of previous data — and in all likelihood that trend had been ongoing for many years before that. Nebraska had lost residents to Nevada in 19 of those 20 years.
But that was reversed in 2009, with Nebraska gaining 213 residents from Arizona, 305 from Florida, 138 from Georgia and 95 from Nevada.
The Arizona and Florida figures particularly stand out because those states have historically been the most popular destinations of all for migrating Nebraskans.
Nebraska lost a net 11,000 residents to Arizona in the previous 20 years, an average of more than 500 a year, with a single-year high of 1,070 in 1998.
Florida had been the second-most-popular new home, with a net of 9,000 moving there over the two prior decades.
Nebraska gained 1,010 people from California in 2009 — the most it saw from any other state.
Texas is now the top destination for Nebraskans on the move, with the Lone Star State gaining more than 1,000 residents from the Cornhusker State each year from 2007 to 2009. There likely are economic factors at play there, too, as Texas has enjoyed one of the nation's strongest economies throughout the recession.
When it comes to movement between Nebraska and Arizona, Mark Sibbitt was part of both the old and new trends.
The Gretna native left for Phoenix shortly after graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2001, attracted by the climate and looking for adventure. He knew lots of other people making the same move.
But after about a decade there he was laid off from his longtime sales job. He probably could have found another, he said, but it all got him thinking about whether it was time for another change.
There was definitely a lure to coming back home to family and old friends. You don't see a very cohesive culture in Arizona, he said, where it seems everyone is originally from somewhere else.
In February, the 33-year-old moved back to Nebraska, and he soon landed a good sales job with trucking firm Werner Enterprises in Sarpy County.
"It was solely about friends and family," he said. "There, it's hard to call it home. It is a melting pot of a lot of transients, in a way."
The move from Arizona also seems to be working out for Carrie Bakke and her husband since they arrived in May.
Carrie, a native of St. Louis, said they picked Nebraska mostly because of a sister in Bellevue, but they also liked the economy, low cost of living and potential opportunities for her husband's music promotion business.
While Omaha already has a well-established indie music scene, Frank Bakke is looking to promote punk and other types of "underground" music. To promote punk, ska, rockabilly, outlaw country and other less popular sounds in Omaha and Lincoln, the Phoenix native has established a fan networking website at www.nebraskapunk.com.
Carrie landed a job at Midtown Crossing as an assistant in the leasing office, and the couple this weekend will move into a house in the 30th and Leavenworth Streets area. They like the fact that there's authentic Mexican food in the neighborhood, something they'll miss about Phoenix.
But will they also miss the weather?
Though originally from the Midwest, Carrie admits the humidity this summer has been a little tough to deal with. And now they're facing the prospect of their first winter here.
"We're mainly nervous about learning how to shovel snow," she said. "The house we're moving into has a really long driveway."
Contact the writer:
402-444-1130, henry.cordes@owh.com
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