How Americans Flee Blue States: California and New York lost a combined 1.4 million residents in 2022, many moving to Texas and Florida, as high housing costs and taxes pushed them to more affordable areas, census data shows
America’s Great Migration continues – and Florida and Texas are winning.
Data from the U.S. Census Bureau this month shows that Florida attracted about 249,064 people last year, while Texas had 174,261 more new arrivals than those who left.
Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina also saw more arrivals than people waving goodbye.
Meanwhile, California and New York together lost nearly 1.4 million residents last year.
Overall, California had a net loss of 341,866 people, compared to 244,137 for New York.
America on the Move: Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona all had more arrivals than departures
Population experts have long studied U.S. population flows.
Some explanations for interstate migration patterns are widely accepted.
Americans move primarily for better jobs, affordable housing, a cheaper cost of living and to lower their tax bills.
Some are moving away from areas with high crime, homelessness and the sight of drug addicts stumbling on the sidewalk.
Social problems are a headache for officials in cities like San Francisco and Portland.
Still, William Frey, a demographer at the think tank The Brookings Institution, said Americans are mainly traveling for money.
“Interstate movers are motivated by work, housing and family reasons,” Frey told DailyMail.com.
Major relocation trends in recent years have seen New Yorkers flocking to Florida and Californians choosing Texas, he noted.
Time to go. A moving van outside a home in Queens, New York City
Customers at a bubble tea restaurant in an up-and-coming part of Waco, Texas
William Frey says Americans vote with their feet
“For example, higher costs of living in major coastal areas are helping to drive outbound movement, while job growth in Sun Belt metros has generated gains.”
New York has been one of America’s biggest losers of people.
Faced with high taxes, higher crime rates and an influx of South American migrants, 545,598 people left New York last year.
Another 301,461 moved to the Empire State, leading to a net loss of 244,137 people.
For this analysis, we did not include people who moved to the US from abroad.
The top destination for New Yorkers was Florida, where 91,000 people moved.
Others stayed closer to home, moving to New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Many were motivated by the eye-watering monthly rents in hot spots like Manhattan, which reached a record average of $5,588 in July, according to a report by Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman.
Nathan Gusdorf says officials need to make New York more affordable
Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the nonprofit Fiscal Policy Institute, said housing costs and taxes were critical.
“The state’s budget policy should be focused on making New York a place where people can afford to live and raise a family,” Gusdorf said.
“Increasingly unaffordable housing and child care, combined with shrinking government services, will continue to drive both individuals and businesses out of our state.”
California may have it worse.
The Golden State is losing people at a rapid rate to Arizona and Texas.
Among them are large numbers of college graduates looking for jobs, according to a study by Stanford University.
Like New Yorkers, they are being squeezed out by the high cost of living.
The report warned of a brain drain and “serious consequences for the labor market and the state’s budget prospects.”
The expensive climate-friendly policies under California Governor Gavin Newsom (photo) could drive residents away
Parts of the South are steadily increasing in population. Pictured: Construction in the fast-growing downtown area of St. Petersburg, Florida
Researchers also described another reason for leaving California: strict new environmental regulations.
Motorists will only be allowed to buy expensive zero-emission vehicles from 2035, causing prices to rise by millions.
This could “fuel the economic and political exodus to milder states like Arizona and Texas,” the study says.
America’s largest interstate flow of people runs from Californians to Texas.
But the new data shows that this number is decreasing: it fell from more than 107,000 people in 2021 to more than 102,000 inhabitants in 2022.
This may be because housing costs in parts of Texas, such as the economic hub of Austin, have become comparable to expensive parts of California.
Some demographers say politics is influencing migration trends.
This RV homeless camp in Northern California highlights the high cost of housing in the Golden State
Scott Wilhide, his wife Alysia Wilhide, their nine-month-old son Jackson and their dog Levee in their new home in Houston, Texas, after leaving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Republican-led states tend to be more socially conservative, which appeals to people who share these values and want to live in an area that limits abortions and makes it easier to own firearms.
Some residents of New York and California have undoubtedly considered moving due to overcrowding, homelessness and fear of crime.
But others move to the Blue States for their own political reasons.
This includes women who want to live somewhere where they can access abortions, or families with transgender children who want access to gender treatments.
Still, Mark Perry, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, says the flow of people is mainly from Democratic-led states to Republican-led states.
Blue states are “economically stagnant, fiscally unhealthy states with higher tax burdens and an unfriendly business environment,” he said.
Red states are “more economically vibrant, dynamic and business-friendly,” he added.
Some New Yorkers are leaving the state due to homelessness and other social issues, like this encampment in a park in downtown New York City
According to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit policy group, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Tennessee and Nevada are especially attractive because they do not impose taxes on workers’ wages.
On the other hand, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Oregon are losing people due to their double-digit income tax rates, which wage earners must pay on top of their federal and local taxes.
American interstate migration could influence the outcome of future elections.
Electoral boundaries are constantly redrawn as populations change.
Texas, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon received Electoral College votes as a result of the 2020 census.
Meanwhile, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia lost their voting power.
A tranquil scene of a resident in a hammock, looking at the growing skyline of St. Petersburg, Florida, one of America’s fastest growing states
Still, it’s too early to say that the population will permanently drift away from states like New York and California, Frey says.
That’s because the COVID-19 pandemic has made it possible for millions to move to cheaper areas and work from home during lockdowns.
Now people are increasingly back in the office, says Frey.
“New York to Florida and California to Texas in particular are large migration flows,” says Frey.
“These were accentuated during the pandemic, in part as movers escaped from densely populated metros, such as Los Angeles and New York City, as telecommuting became popular.”
Although Covid-19 has made gains in recent weeks, the virus is in the rearview mirror and no longer dictates how people live, work and play.
“It is not yet clear that these increases will continue into the pandemic year,” Frey added.