Selling Nebraska to current, potential Nebraskans

As is its wont to do, U.S. News and World Report recently released its Best States "rankings," a list on which Nebraska placed third, up one spot from 2023. Only Utah and New Hampshire bested our fair environs in the best states standings.

So, yes, go ahead. Yay, us!

The magazine's methodology included rankings in eight primary categories: fiscal stability, opportunity, infrastructure, crime and corrections, economy, education, health care and natural environment. Each of those were subdivided for a total of 20 lenses through which a state's score was calculated. Researchers crunched data from 71 metrics culled from surveys of 70,000 people over the past three years.

Nebraska scored no higher than third in any one category, but was in the top half of all eight and the top 10 in three of them: fiscal stability (third), infrastructure (fourth) and natural environment (ninth).

Some will see an excellent rating in fiscal stability and wonder why the knickers of many state leaders are often bunched about the property tax rates and public education costs. Others will question infrastructure, having just punctured a tire in a pothole. Still others will question policies that diminish safeguards to our highly ranked natural environment.

Nevertheless, U.S. News, whose college rankings have surely figured prominently in the decisions of thousands of high school seniors, seems to know what it's doing. Come on: Being "better" than 47 other states has to tell you something.

More troubling than a quibble with methodology or a statistical outlier is the state's recent push to stop up the "brain drain," the negative outflow of the best and brightest young people – both native Nebarskans or transplants here for college.

The question becomes - when one reads the good news about our state compared to others - how does drainage happen when at least one reputable ranking service puts us at No 3? The juxtaposition reveals some incongruity.

According to the latest numbers from the Census Bureau and the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the state lost a net 4,610 people with undergraduate, graduate or professional degrees in 2022, up from the year before and continuing a negative trend.

Obviously, Nebraska politicians and civic leaders read the same numbers. And they ask the same questions ... or at least they should. What's driving the outmigration? How do we underscore a high ranking to attract and keep more nimble minds to and in the state? The difference between those 25 or older leaving and arriving in 2022 was well over 5,000 - 31,600 saying goodbye and 26,000 saying hello.

To date, however, some in the legislature and the last couple of governors argued that a better tax climate would keep the young and talented here. The research, which I'm sure they also read, doesn't suss that out.

Josie Schafer, director of the Center for Public Affairs Research at UNO, which provides research on state migration, has said that housing and job opportunities are driving a negative traffic flow. Moreover, other research shows that immigration is impacting population gain more so than those arriving from other states.

Migration can also be a very personal thing, often driven by love, rarely touted in economic and demographic research, but often a powerful force in where someone chooses to live and work and contribute to a local community and a state.

No, state officials need not keep sales data on Hallmark cards or roses. What they should consider are other less empirical factors driving people out of the state when we have the receipts - and ranking - that should convince them to stay.

I'm thinking when a state or municipality opts to pass laws or create policies that isolate individuals from specific communities, a negative effect can surely follow.

Last year Erin Porterfield, executive director of nonprofit Heartland Workforce Solutions, told the Examiner's Cindy Gonzalez that those with whom her agency does business, its "partners," while searching for clues to why workers leave, indicated that some reported "negative experiences with racism" on the job, dwindling work opportunities and limited social interactions. She said limiting "... rights for people of diverse identities, including transgender care," was also a contributing factor.

All of which paints a complex image of why people come to Nebraska and why they leave. Now, however, with a new and improved state ranking, leaders in government and business have something to celebrate ... and to sell.

They just need to make sure it's what our current neighbors and thousands of potential Nebraskans want to hear and, more importantly, want to live with.