Homegrown and Gone: The Silent Departure of Texas-Born Talent and McKennon's Plan to Reverse It
Texas has grown accustomed to celebrating its inbound migration numbers. Californians, New Yorkers, and Illinoisans arrive by the tens of thousands each year, drawn by the promise of lower taxes, economic freedom, and a culture that still prizes individual initiative. Politicians on both sides of the aisle point to those figures as validation that the Texas model is working.
But a quieter story is unfolding in the opposite direction—one that rarely makes the front page and almost never surfaces in a campaign speech. Young professionals who were born in Texas, educated in Texas, and built their earliest ambitions against a backdrop of Texas sunsets are leaving. Not in a dramatic wave, but in a steady, deliberate trickle that, left unaddressed, threatens to hollow out the very foundation of the state's future workforce.
McKennon for Texas believes that no serious conversation about the state's long-term prosperity can ignore this trend. Attracting transplants is valuable. Retaining the people Texas already raised is essential.
Where Are They Going—and Why?
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and independent migration research firms paint a nuanced picture. While Texas remains a net recipient of domestic migrants, outbound flows among the 25-to-38 age cohort have increased measurably over the past decade. The top destinations include Colorado, Tennessee, Georgia, and—perhaps counterintuitively—Washington state and North Carolina.
The reasons these young Texans cite are not primarily ideological. Exit surveys and anecdotal reporting consistently highlight three interrelated pressures:
Cost of living relative to compensation. Texas has no state income tax, a genuine advantage. But property taxes in major metropolitan counties have surged to levels that effectively negate that benefit for young families attempting to purchase their first home. A 28-year-old engineer in Dallas earning a competitive salary may find that homeownership in the suburbs now requires a financial commitment that rivals what his counterpart faces in Charlotte or Nashville—cities that also offer lower costs of entry and comparable career ecosystems.
Career specialization and industry concentration. Texas boasts a diverse economy, but certain high-growth sectors—biomedical research, advanced aerospace, creative technology, and specialized financial services—remain concentrated in a handful of corridors. When a young professional's career trajectory demands proximity to a particular industry cluster, and that cluster does not yet exist at scale in Texas, the calculus of staying becomes more complicated.
Quality-of-life infrastructure. This category is the most politically sensitive, but it demands honest engagement. Young Texans increasingly cite concerns about public transit options in sprawling metros, the condition of public green spaces, the availability of walkable urban neighborhoods, and access to cultural amenities. These are not liberal talking points; they are the practical preferences of a generation that will decide where to build careers, start families, and pay taxes for the next four decades.
What This Costs Texas
The departure of homegrown talent carries costs that extend well beyond economics, though the economic dimension alone is sobering. Every young professional who leaves takes with them not only their current earning power but also the compounding value of a career's worth of income taxes forgone, businesses never started, patents never filed, and community investments never made.
Perhaps more significantly, native Texans carry an institutional knowledge of this state—its culture, its landscape, its civic traditions—that no transplant can fully replicate. When that knowledge migrates to Denver or Raleigh, Texas loses something that cannot be replaced simply by recruiting more out-of-state arrivals.
There is also a political dimension. A state that continuously exports its younger, educated, civically engaged citizens while importing residents from states with different governing philosophies will, over time, face mounting pressure on the very policy framework that made Texas attractive in the first place. Retaining homegrown Texans is, in this sense, an act of cultural and political self-preservation.
McKennon's Targeted Strategy for Retention
McKennon for Texas does not believe that government can—or should—attempt to engineer where individuals choose to live. What government can do is remove the artificial barriers and policy failures that make the decision to leave feel rational when it should feel unnecessary.
Property Tax Relief Anchored in Structural Reform. The most immediate quality-of-life lever available to state leadership is meaningful, durable property tax relief. McKennon supports expanding homestead exemptions for first-time buyers, capping annual appraisal increases for primary residences at a rate that genuinely tracks inflation rather than the speculative surges of a heated real estate market, and requiring greater transparency from appraisal districts whose methodologies often disadvantage working families.
Industry Diversification Through Targeted Incentive Architecture. Texas must be deliberate about cultivating the next generation of high-growth sectors rather than relying solely on the energy and technology industries that anchor the current economy. McKennon proposes a streamlined, accountable incentive framework that reduces regulatory friction for emerging industries—advanced manufacturing, life sciences, defense technology, and precision agriculture—while demanding measurable job creation benchmarks in return for any public investment.
Workforce Pipeline Alignment. Too often, Texas community colleges and universities produce graduates whose skills do not align with the industries growing fastest within the state. McKennon supports a systematic review of workforce development programs, conducted in genuine partnership with private sector employers, to ensure that the pipeline between education and employment is calibrated to Texas's actual economic needs rather than to outdated curriculum frameworks.
Infrastructure Investment That Reflects Growth Reality. Texas cannot continue to absorb population growth at its current pace while deferring the infrastructure investments that make dense, growing metros livable. McKennon supports prioritizing transportation and utility infrastructure spending in high-growth corridors, with an emphasis on solutions that expand mobility options without surrendering the car-centric design that remains practical across most of the state's geography.
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Expansion Beyond the Major Metros. One of the most promising levers for retaining young Texans is ensuring that entrepreneurial opportunity is not confined to Austin, Dallas, and Houston. McKennon's rural and secondary-city economic agenda—which includes broadband infrastructure investment, regulatory relief for small business formation, and expanded access to capital through community development financial institutions—creates conditions under which a talented young Texan can build something meaningful without relocating to a coastal megacity.
A State Worth Staying For
Texas did not build its reputation by accident. It was constructed through generations of deliberate choices—about governance, about freedom, about the relationship between citizens and their government—that created conditions in which ambition and effort are reliably rewarded. That legacy belongs first to the Texans who were shaped by it from birth.
McKennon for Texas believes that the most powerful argument for staying in this state is not a tax rate or a marketing campaign. It is a governing philosophy that takes seriously the material conditions of young Texans' lives, removes the obstacles that make departure feel necessary, and trusts that when given a genuine choice, the people Texas raised will choose to stay.
The talent is here. The commitment is here. What is needed now is leadership willing to make Texas worthy of the people who already call it home.
