[cbhl]

I felt like this chart shows that retail store closures are a lagging indicator for employment. Stores are up in NY, WA, TX -- all states where people migrate to to work in tech companies. (Not sure about ND and UT, though.)

[barake]

The charts are over a decade, wouldn’t be surprising if North Dakota could be explained by the oil boom that happened there. No idea about Utah...

[jjeaff]

Utah has experienced a tech boom as well. They have multiple unicorns. Qualtrics, Domo, pluralsight, as well as a large presence from Adobe, Microsoft, and eBay among others.

[knz]

ND has/had the oil boom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota_oil_boom). You can see it clearly on the map(s) under "Retail Landscape" (the percentage change maps).