People Are Fleeing New Jersey

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 3, 6:45AM EST

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People Are Fleeing New Jersey — © Robert Daly / Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic started a great migration. As people could work from home by the millions, they began to relocate, often from America’s large, expensive coastal cities to less expensive ones, often in the South. This caused an influx of people to such states as Arizona, Florida and Texas. States such as New York and California lost people, according to the Census Bureau. (See which cities attracted the most new residents last year.)

Where Did They Come From, Where Did They Go?

The United Van Lines 47th Annual National Movers Study is a major annual survey of American relocation habits. The new edition covers 2023 and is based on the moving company’s proprietary data, using information about where it moves its customers over the year. The trends it found match many of those that started during the pandemic: “We are continuing to see the trend that Americans are moving to more affordable, lower-density areas across the country, with many heading to Southern states.”

States are divided into two groups based on the number of inbound moves into the state compared to outbound moves. “High inbound” states are those where 55% of moves were inbound, while “high outbound states” are where 55% moved away from the state.

The state with the most people leaving is New Jersey, where 65% of the moves were outbound. According to the research, “The top motivation for moves out of the state was driven primarily from those looking to retire.”

Several large northern states and New York and California follow New Jersey. Those in the northern tier include Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, sometimes known as the old “industrial states,” which were once dominated by factories but lost jobs as the work was outsourced overseas.

These are the states with the most outbound moves:

New Jersey
Illinois
North Dakota
New York
Michigan
California
Massachusetts
Kansas

The states where people moved most are led by Vermont, with 65% inbound. This list also includes the southern states of South Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama.

These are the states with the most inbound moves:

Vermont
District of Columbia
South Carolina
Arkansas
Rhode Island
North Carolina
South Dakota
Alabama
New Mexico
West Virginia

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.