Where Americans Are Moving in 2026: The Cities Gaining, and Losing, the Most Residents

For decades, the story of American migration has followed a familiar script: people leave the Northeast and Midwest for the Sun Belt. But the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, moving companies, and real estate platforms tells a different story. The Sun Belt’s pull is weakening in some metros and strengthening in others, the Midwest is quietly emerging as a destination, and a steep drop in immigration is reshaping which cities grow and which ones shrink.

The U.S. added just 1.78 million people between July 2024 and July 2025, according to Census Bureau estimates released in January 2026, roughly half the 3.2 million added the year before. The primary driver of that slowdown was a 54% decline in net international migration, from 2.7 million to 1.3 million.

That single shift reshaped the math for cities across the country, exposing which cities were growing because Americans were choosing to move there and which were growing only because immigrants were arriving.

The States People Are Moving To

Multiple independent data sources agree on the broad winners, even if they rank them differently.

The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 estimates show South Carolina growing fastest among all states at 1.5%, followed by Idaho (1.4%), North Carolina (1.3%), and Texas (1.2%). In absolute numbers, Texas led the nation with 391,243 new residents, followed by Florida (+196,980) and North Carolina (+145,907).

The U-Haul Growth Index, which tracks the net gain or loss of one-way truck rentals across more than 2.5 million transactions per year, ranked Texas as the No. 1 growth state for 2025 , up from No. 2 the prior year. Florida climbed to No. 2, followed by North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

United Van Lines’ 49th Annual National Movers Study, based on full-service household moves, tells a slightly different story at the top: Oregon ranked No. 1 for inbound moves at 64.5%, up from No. 8 the prior year. South Carolina (60.8%), Delaware (59.7%), and North Carolina (57.8%) rounded out the top tier.

The South as a region grew at 0.9%, more than four times the rate of the Northeast at 0.2%, according to Census estimates.

But look closely and the data shows a significant shift. Texas and Florida, the two largest migration magnets of the past decade, are now classified as “balanced” by United Van Lines, meaning inbound and outbound moves are roughly equal. That is a first for both states in recent memory.

The States People Are Leaving

Five states lost population outright between July 2024 and July 2025, according to Census estimates: California (-9,000), Hawaii (-2,000), Vermont (-1,800), West Virginia (-1,000 to -2,000), and New Mexico (-1,000).

California’s story matters the most. The state has experienced persistent domestic outmigration for years; approximately 230,000 residents per year leave for other states on a net basis. In prior years, international immigration more than offset those losses. But net immigration to California dropped roughly 70% year over year, from 361,000 to approximately 109,000, tipping the state into decline.

The U-Haul Growth Index has ranked California dead last, 50th out of 50 states, for six consecutive years. New York (47th), New Jersey (48th), and Illinois (49th) have remained near the bottom throughout.

New Jersey has been the No. 1 outbound state in United Van Lines’ study for eight consecutive years, though its outbound rate improved from 67% to 62% in the most recent data. The study noted that 21% of New Jersey’s inbound moves in 2025 were adults ages 18–34, suggesting a younger generation may be bucking the trend.

Ohio experienced the single largest ranking drop on the U-Haul index, falling 29 positions from 14th to 43rd in a single year. Oregon saw the largest climb, jumping 23 spots from 34th to 11th.

Where the Growth Is: Metro by Metro

At the metro level, the data splits into two stories: fast-growing small and mid-size metros versus large metros gaining the most people in absolute terms.

Fastest-Growing Metros by Percentage

The Census Bureau’s Vintage 2024 estimates (the most recent available at the metro level, covering July 2023 to July 2024) show Florida and the Southeast dominating percentage growth:

Nine of the 10 fastest-growing metros are in the South. Five are in Florida alone. These tend to be smaller, affordable metros with shorter commutes and a realistic path to homeownership, a pattern United Van Lines specifically highlighted in its 2025 study.

At the city level, U-Haul data tells a similar story: Ocala, Florida, was the No. 1 growth city for the third time in four years. Twelve of U-Haul’s top 25 growth cities are in Florida, including eight of the top 10.

Largest Metros by Absolute Growth

The biggest metros tell a different story, and it comes with a major caveat.

New York’s gain of 213,403 people, the largest in the nation, is almost entirely attributable to international migration. The metro lost nearly 277,000 people during 2020–2021 and continues to lose domestic residents at a rate of approximately 119,000 per year. According to analysis from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, at least five large metros on this list (Washington, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, and Seattle) would have lost population without international immigration. With immigration now sharply reduced, those metros face potential renewed decline.

Dallas-Fort Worth repeated as the No. 1 growth metro on U-Haul’s index, with Houston jumping to No. 2 and Austin at No. 3. Texas metros account for six of the top 25 on U-Haul’s metro list.

The Sun Belt Reality Check

The most significant finding across the data may be that the Sun Belt migration boom, the dominant demographic story of the pandemic era, is decelerating in many of its flagship metros.

Redfin’s analysis of Census domestic migration data for the 50 most populous metros found steep year-over-year slowdowns:

Tampa’s domestic inflow dropped 70% in a single year. Orlando’s nearly vanished. Atlanta flipped from a net gain of 16,663 to a net loss.

Florida’s domestic net migration statewide fell from 314,000 in 2022 to approximately 64,000 in the most recent data, an 80% decline from its pandemic peak, according to Census estimates.

But the slowdown is not uniform. Phoenix saw its net domestic inflow actually increase, from 19,378 to 21,364. Las Vegas surged from 5,069 to 12,225. Maricopa County, Arizona (which encompasses the Phoenix metro) added 57,471 people, the fifth-largest county-level gain in the country.

What explains the divergence? Housing costs appear to be a factor. Several Sun Belt metros that attracted pandemic-era migrants have since seen significant price appreciation, compressing the affordability advantage that drew people in the first place. In some Florida markets, rising property insurance costs and climate concerns have added a new layer of friction.

Redfin reported that for the first time since 2019, high-flood-risk areas in the United States saw a net domestic outflow of 29,027 people in 2024. Miami-Dade County recorded the worst domestic outflow among high-flood-risk counties at -67,418.

The Midwest Emerges

While the Sun Belt gets most of the attention, one of the most notable trends in the data is the Midwest’s emergence as a migration destination.

Minneapolis and Indianapolis both flipped from net domestic outflow to net inflow in the most recent year, according to Redfin’s analysis of Census data. Minnesota appeared on United Van Lines’ top 10 inbound list for the first time, and Minneapolis cracked U-Haul’s top 25 growth metros , also a first.

Zillow’s analysis of its own platform data identified something similar: its hottest housing markets of 2025 were dominated by affordable Midwest cities like Rockford, Illinois; Toledo, Ohio; Dearborn, Michigan; South Bend, Indiana; and Carmel, Indiana.

The math is simple. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that 74.9% of U.S. households cannot afford a median-priced new home at current prices. National median home prices reached $414,900 in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors. But the regional gap is enormous: the median in the West was $625,800 and in the Northeast $514,600, compared to $317,100 in the Midwest.

At the metro level, the contrast is even starker. San Jose’s median home price in the fourth quarter of 2025 was $1,920,000. Anaheim’s was $1,396,500. San Francisco’s was $1,305,000.

Meanwhile, according to Zillow’s projections, a homebuyer in Pittsburgh faces a mortgage payment consuming just 21.4% of the median household income. In Detroit, it is 25.5%. Cleveland: 27.7%. San Antonio: 27.7%. Houston: 28.8%.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities data puts the gap in hard numbers: California’s overall cost of living index is 110.7 (where 100 is the national average), while Arkansas sits at 86.9 and Mississippi at 87.0. For housing specifically, California’s index is 154.3 versus West Virginia’s 54.2, a nearly threefold difference.

Why People Are Moving

For the second consecutive year, the top reason Americans gave for moving was to be closer to family, cited by 29% of respondents in United Van Lines’ 2025 study. A new job or company transfer, which had been the leading reason for decades, came in second at 26%. Retirement accounted for 14%.

The family-first trend appears connected to the normalization of remote work. According to research from Stanford economist Nick Bloom, 25% of all paid U.S. workdays are now performed from home, a figure that has stabilized since 2023 and shows no signs of returning to pre-pandemic levels. A record 32.6% of Redfin users in 2025 searched for homes in a metro area different from where they currently lived, up from approximately 26% before the pandemic.

Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that remote work disproportionately enables migration among high-income, highly educated workers, the demographic with the most location flexibility. Among movers, 53% chose suburban areas, and remote households spent 7% or more on housing than comparable non-remote households, trading commute costs for space.

Tax policy also plays a role. Nine states currently levy no individual income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. The Tax Foundation estimates that from April 2020 to June 2023, high-tax states lost a net 2.8 million residents to low-tax states. Florida alone gained 819,000, Texas 656,000, and Tennessee 207,000 during that period.

The five states with the worst net domestic outmigration (Hawaii, New York, California, Alaska, and Illinois) are predominantly high-tax, high-cost states. The five with the strongest inbound domestic migration (South Carolina, Idaho, Delaware, North Carolina, and Tennessee) are all low-to-moderate tax states.

The Cities People Are Leaving, and a Surprising Trend

The metros losing the most domestic residents are familiar names: New York (-119,198), Los Angeles (-99,979), Miami (-67,418), and Chicago (-42,844).

But there is a less obvious trend working in the other direction: the bleeding is slowing. New York’s domestic outflow improved by nearly 34,000 year over year. Los Angeles improved by roughly 21,000. Washington, D.C. improved by 20,000. Chicago improved by nearly 20,000. Sacramento flipped from an outflow of 12,384 to a modest inflow.

San Francisco and Denver, which had been net-loss metros on U-Haul’s index, both flipped to net-gain markets in 2025 and entered U-Haul’s top 25 growth metros for the first time. Philadelphia joined them.

Illinois, ranked the No. 2 outbound state by United Van Lines in 2024, moved to “balanced” status in 2025, the first time in over a decade.

Whether this stabilization holds depends in large part on immigration. Many of these large coastal and Great Lakes metros depend on international arrivals to offset domestic losses. With net immigration to the United States cut roughly in half in the most recent year, the math becomes significantly more challenging.

The Immigration Factor

The 54% decline in net international migration, from 2.7 million to 1.3 million between the two most recent annual periods, is the single largest factor in the national population growth slowdown, according to Census data.

In the prior year, international migration was the largest component of population growth in 40 states plus Washington, D.C. In the most recent year, that number dropped to 30 states plus D.C. Domestic migration became the dominant growth driver in 16 states, up from fewer the prior year. Arizona, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Wyoming all shifted from international-migration-driven growth to domestic-migration-driven growth.

The shift exposed a deep reliance on foreign arrivals. According to analysis from the Brookings Institution, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Boston, and several other large metros have relied on international immigration to maintain or grow their populations for years. Without that inflow at prior levels, several face the prospect of renewed population decline.

California’s case is a good example. The state’s domestic outmigration of approximately 230,000 people per year has been a consistent trend. But in prior years, international immigration of 350,000 or more masked the losses. When immigration dropped to roughly 109,000, California’s population declined for the first time in the modern Census era.

What the Data Shows, and What It Doesn’t

The broad strokes are clear: Americans continue to move toward lower-cost, lower-tax states, with the South and parts of the Mountain West as primary beneficiaries. But the pace has moderated substantially from the pandemic-era surge, and the Midwest is gaining traction as an affordable alternative.

Several important caveats apply. The U-Haul and United Van Lines datasets capture only their own customers, a slice of the market that skews toward do-it-yourself movers (U-Haul) and higher-income full-service movers (United Van Lines). The Census Bureau’s metro-level data lags by about a year at the time of publication. And the Redfin search data reflects intent, not completed transactions, a distinction that matters in markets like Miami, where strong inbound search interest coexists with accelerating domestic outflow.

Additionally, the overall rate of American mobility continues to decline. Fewer than 9% of Americans change their residence in any given year, down from 20% in the 1980s. Allied Van Lines reported that interstate moves declined 3% from 2024 to 2025, following a 7% decline from 2023 to 2024. The pandemic-era rate of 14.2 moves per 1,000 people in 2022 has fallen to 2.8 per 1,000 as of 2024.

The Americans who do move, however, are increasingly making bigger choices: crossing state lines more often, factoring in tax burdens and insurance costs, and, enabled by remote work, choosing locations based on proximity to family rather than proximity to an office.

Data sources: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 Population Estimates; U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2024 Population Estimates; U-Haul Growth Index 2025; United Van Lines 49th Annual National Movers Study; Allied Van Lines 2025 U.S. Migration Report; North American Van Lines 2025 Migration Map; Redfin Migration and Climate Migration Reports; National Association of Realtors Q4 2025 Metro Median Prices; National Association of Home Builders Cost of Housing Index; Zillow Research; Bureau of Economic Analysis Regional Price Parities; Bureau of Labor Statistics Metropolitan Area Employment; Tax Foundation 2025 State Tax Competitiveness Index; Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (Nick Bloom); Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies; Brookings Institution.