This Is the State People Are Moving To

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 11, 7:05AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the State People Are Moving To — © Sean Pavone / iStock via Getty Images

There was a great migration from early in the COVID-19 pandemic throughout 2021 into 2022. People moved from expensive coastal states to places inland like Arizona and Florida. Housing was less expensive in these states, and some people liked the lifestyles and weather better than in places such as California and New York. (These cities attracted the most new residents last year.)

The migration was slowed by higher mortgage rates, which have cooled the rate at which people could buy new homes, but the move has not ended. According to a new study about net migration by moving service provider Hire A Helper, Oklahoma’s population gain (the number of people who moved into the state versus those who left) was the highest last year. The data for “The Top 10 States and Cities of 2023: 2023-24 HireAHelper Migration Report” came from 75,000 “moves book” and Census Bureau data.

The net population gain in Oklahoma was about 40%. The next two states based on net gains were South Carolina and Tennessee, each near 35%.

Since many people relocated to the South, it makes sense that the net gains were about 30% in North Carolina, more than 26% in Kentucky and almost 20% in Alabama.

Oklahoma does not show up on other analyses of population movement, like those from Northern Van Lines or the Census Bureau. However, the states with better affordability tend to be in the Deep South.

These are the 10 states people are migrating to most:

Oklahoma (40.0%)
South Carolina (35.0%)
Tennessee (34.6%)
North Carolina (30.2%)
District of Columbia (29.5%)
Kentucky (26.4%)
Alabama (19.6%)
Wisconsin (19.4%)
Michigan (17.7%)
Florida (11.4%)

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.