Americans Are Voting With Their Feet: The 2025 Migration Map

The Scale of the Move

In 2025, according to HireAHelper's 2026 Migration Report — an annual analysis based on a database of 14,977,223 adult moves tracked by data firm PGM — nearly 15 million US adults relocated. That figure represents 4.46 percent of the country's adult population. The report, published January 16, 2026 and authored by Daniel Cobb, is now in its fifth year of tracking national relocation patterns using real-time move data rather than lagging census estimates.

The vast majority of those moves — 78.49 percent, or more than 11.7 million — were intrastate, meaning people relocated within their own state rather than crossing state lines. Just over 3.2 million Americans moved across state lines.

The Census Bureau maintains a separate state-to-state migration flow dataset derived from the American Community Survey, confirming the broad pattern of southward and westward domestic migration that HireAHelper's data reflects. ResiClub Analytics, a real estate data firm, has also published net domestic migration maps using Census data showing the deceleration of migration into Texas and Florida relative to earlier years, while noting continued momentum in the Southeast and Mountain West.

Who's Gaining — and By How Much

Measured by per-capita net gain — the most useful metric for understanding where migration pressure is most concentrated — South Carolina led the nation in 2025. According to the HireAHelper report, the state gained 79.7 residents for every 10,000 people already living there, adding a net total of 41,548 residents. The HireAHelper report notes that the Charleston and Myrtle Beach areas have been the primary magnets, offering coastal living without the price tag of the Northeast or California.

Idaho ranked second, gaining 63.2 residents per 10,000. HireAHelper attributes Idaho's continued appeal to a combination of affordability, outdoor lifestyle, and lower congestion relative to neighboring Western states. The Idaho Statesman has separately reported that wealthy, educated Californians make up a significant share of Idaho's in-migrants, with high coastal housing costs cited as a primary driver.

Delaware ranked third, with a net gain of 54.5 per 10,000 residents. The state benefits from its proximity to major East Coast employment centers — Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City — while offering no sales tax, no estate tax, and no tax on Social Security benefits. Tennessee ranked fourth at 43.6 per 10,000 and Alabama fifth at 36.6 per 10,000. Both states have no state income tax on wages, and both have seen sustained job growth in recent years.

In raw population terms, Texas added the most residents of any state — 68,318 net — followed by South Carolina at 41,548. Tennessee, North Carolina, and Alabama also posted significant absolute gains.

Who's Losing

California posted the largest absolute net loss of any state in 2025, shedding 98,568 residents according to the HireAHelper data. New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Maryland followed. Massachusetts had the highest per-capita loss rate: 37.9 residents leaving for every 10,000 already there.

Washington, D.C. consistently recorded the highest per-capita outflow of any geography tracked, with an average of 7.6 residents leaving for every 10,000 people each month throughout 2025, according to the monthly breakdown in the HireAHelper report.

The HireAHelper report is careful to note that large absolute losses do not necessarily signal long-term population decline in those states — California and New York both continue to receive significant international in-migration. But the domestic outflow does reflect mounting pressure from housing costs and cost of living in those markets.

A separate PODS moving company dataset, cited in the HireAHelper report, found that the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Wilmington, North Carolina corridor ranked as the top move-in market for the third consecutive year in 2025.

What's Driving It

The HireAHelper report identifies lower cost of living as the factor most strongly correlated with positive migration performance across states. The pattern held especially in the Southeast and Mountain West. States in those regions consistently offer lower median home prices, lower property taxes, and in many cases no state income tax.

Doug Weston, U-Haul Vice President for Alabama, described the value proposition to Alabama.com: "You can buy a house for the same price as the one you had on the West Coast, but it will be at least double the size and you will get a giant plot of land to go with it."

The 2025 pattern also showed a shift away from the largest metros toward secondary and smaller cities. HireAHelper found that smaller metros outpaced major cities on a per-capita basis, and that the year was characterized less by dramatic long-distance relocations and more by deliberate, affordability-driven moves — often within the same state but to lower-cost areas within it.

Demographics of the Movers

The HireAHelper report includes a demographic breakdown showing that younger generations clustered in Washington, D.C., while older Americans gravitated toward New England states. The data also shows that economic opportunity — not just lifestyle — was a primary driver in 2025, marking a shift from prior years when climate, outdoor access, and remote-work flexibility featured more prominently in stated migration motivations.

The analysis found that 2025 was a "slower overall moving year" compared to the pandemic-era peak of domestic mobility, but that pressure remained intense in specific states and metros, "particularly across the Southeast and select secondary markets."

The Longer Arc

The 2025 data fits within a multi-year trend. ResiClub Analytics, tracking Census Bureau state-to-state migration flow data through mid-2025, found that Texas and Florida — which dominated Sun Belt migration in 2021 through 2023 — saw deceleration as their own housing costs rose. The baton has been passed to lower-cost states that have not yet experienced the price appreciation that made Florida and Texas less attractive to cost-conscious movers.

South Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee, and Alabama are now in that role. Whether they can sustain their per-capita growth rates without triggering the same affordability spiral that dampened Texas and Florida's appeal is a question the data does not yet answer — but it is the question that will define domestic migration for the second half of the decade.