Annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows more than 39 million Americans changed residences between 2021 and 2022, offering a brief glimpse into the internal migration that has defined the nation since its earliest days.
The vast majority of those who moved — 31 million — stayed within the same state. But about 8.2 million people moved across state lines between 2021 and 2022.
Florida gained more new residents than any other state over that period, at 738,000, according to Census Bureau estimates. Texas added 668,000 residents from elsewhere, while California added 475,000.
But California also lost more residents to other states than any other, 817,000. Texas was the only other state to lose more than 100,000 residents to another state, though it still gained a net of more than half a million new residents for the year.
Here’s a look at the migration patterns between states:
The largest single exchange took place between California and Texas. More than 102,000 California residents moved to the Lone Star State, while 42,000 Texas residents headed west to the Golden State.
But California residents were more likely to move to neighboring states; 122,000 California residents headed to Arizona and Nevada in the last year, and another 86,000 moved to Washington or Oregon.
On the East Coast, more than 90,000 New Yorkers flocked south to Florida, the second-largest single-state migration of the year.
Beyond the individual state bragging rights, the data shows a divided picture: States that voted for President Biden in 2020 lost a larger number of residents than states that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020.
But states that voted for Biden also gained more residents than states that voted for Trump.
That’s largely because, when they move, Americans are most likely to relocate to a state that is similar in political behavior to the state from which they came. Most people who left blue states moved to blue states; most people who left red states moved to red states.
But some people seem to like the change of political climate: About 3.7 million of us moved from a blue state to a red state, or vice versa. And viewed through that lens, red America got a little bigger: The number of people who moved from blue states to red states outnumbered those who moved from red states to blue states by about 700,000.
More than 2.1 million people moved to the United States from abroad, and those people were most likely to relocate to California, Florida and Texas, all of which attracted more than 10% of international migrants from the last year.
You can find the state-to-state migration data here.