Louisiana is National Leader in Brain Drain – Is it Contagious?

Every day it seems as if folks in Louisiana are facing something new or different. Sure, we still get to face our share of severe storms and tornadoes. The new Hurricane Season forecast will not be on the front page of our tourism sites. But at least we don't have murder hornets in Mandeville or an overabundance of cicadas in Cecilia.

Nah, here in Louisiana our latest malady to make the news sounds like something that every person I know has. It's called Brain Drain. Are you familiar? At first blush, you might think Brain Drain is that feeling you get after spending all day online attempting to explain a simple fact to a moron on social media, but no, that's not it.

Brain Drain also sounds as if it could be connected to the "stealing" or "borrowing" of intellectual property. I know you don't think of sites such as TikTok or Instagram as being harbors of intelligent beings but there are people on those platforms knocking down some serious money "acting the donkey" for our entertainment. But no, that's still not Brain Drain.

Brain Drain will be a political buzzword for most candidates who are running for office in the Gulf South. Except for the state of Texas, all of the south, think of the footprint for the Southeastern Conference, is listed at a very high risk of Brain Drain. The lone exceptions on the Brain Drain top ten are New York, Alaska, Iowa, and South Dakota.

And yes, Brain Drain is the buzzword name politicos have assigned to the phenomenon where more educated people are leaving a particular area than moving into that particular area. People grow up and get educated in Louisiana and then leave for better opportunities with the education they have worked hard to earn.

The website Hire A Helper compiled the data for the study using information from the Census Bureau regarding population, the economy, and other factors to determine which states are losing brain power and which states are gaining it.

Mississippi was the worst for Brain Drain with nearly two-thirds of educated individuals fleeing the state for better opportunities. Oklahoma was next followed by Louisiana, Missouri, and New York. In Louisiana the Brain Drain estimate was a 62% net loss of educated individuals, that's the same figure for Missouri, Oklahoma, and New York, by the way.

The states where educated individuals are moving include Washington, South Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. South Carolina was the only southern state to make the "good side" of the Brain Drain list. 

I guess you could say it is contagious. Obviously, Louisiana college graduates are watching other college graduates move away from the state to start careers in the fields they were educated for. Perhaps compelling is a better word than contagious, the bottom line is our best and brightest are leaving the state.

And you can expect our politicians to be upset about it. No, not upset enough to do something about it but mad enough to make speeches and pump their fists and then do everything they can to keep the population of Louisiana stupid so they, the politicians, can have their way with all of our money. Perhaps that's just speculation on my part but I bet you have no trouble believing it, right?