Every year, millions of Americans pack up their homes and move, whether across the street or across the nation. New data from the Internal Revenue Service shows just where those people end up, offering a snapshot of internal migration.
This year’s data, covering tax filings from 2021, backs up records from the U.S. Census Bureau that shows big states like California, Illinois and New York shedding hundreds of thousands of residents.
California alone lost a net of more than 332,000 residents in 2021, the IRS data show. More than 105,000 of those residents left for Texas, and more than 50,000 fled to neighboring Arizona and Nevada.
But invading Californians moved to lots of other states as well: More people moved from California to 11 states — from nearby Washington and Oregon to far-flung Tennessee and Hawaii — than from any other state.
The bulk of the 262,000 residents who left New York decamped to New Jersey, 85,000, and — confirming the stereotype — Florida, 84,000. Tens of thousands more went to Pennsylvania, California, Connecticut and North Carolina.
Illinois residents were most likely to move just across borders; Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana all saw more residents arrive from Illinois than any other state.
Governors love to crow that people are moving to their states, but even states that are growing the fastest have their share of out-migration. People from Texas, which added more net population than any other state, still moved away — more than 36,000 ex-Texans moved to California and Florida, while more than 20,000 moved to both Colorado and Oklahoma.
Here’s where each state got the most new migrants — that is, the states from which the highest number of new residents moved in: