If you are seeing fewer moving trucks with out-of-state plates on the road in California, you are not imagining it.
U-Haul, the ubiquitous do-it-yourself moving company, reported that California had the fewest one-way haulers entering the state for the fifth consecutive year in 2024.
Unimpressed by California’s high cost of living, about 38% higher than the national average, Americans bypass the Golden State and move to states like Texas, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee, which topped U-Haul’s Growth Index.
The state with the most incoming residents? South Carolina, according to U-Haul.
“State-to-state transactions from the past year reaffirm customer tendencies that have been pronounced for some time,” said John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president in a statement. “Migration to the Southeast and Southwest continues as families gauge their cost of living, job opportunities, quality of life and other factors that go into relocating to a new state.”
“Out-migration remains prevalent for a number of markets across the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast — and particularly California,” he added.
The number of people leaving the state has slowed
While the number of people who have left the state—239,575 between 2023 and 2024, according to Census data, makes it the state with the largest migration loss in the nation, it is substantially less than it was during the pandemic years.
California lost 412,000 people between July 2020 and July 2023, with most of the loss occurring during the first year of the pandemic, according to the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
The loss was led by a sharp increase in migration of people across all socioeconomic levels to other states, according to PPIC analysis, with people leaving to buy a home or seek more affordable housing costs and remote working offering flexibility in where they could live and work.
The state also experienced fewer births, higher deaths, and lower international migration, according to the PPIC.
The population dip led to a Congressional seat loss in 2020.
California is the most populous state
According to Census figures, California is the most populous state in the nation, with 39,431,263 people as of July 2024. Texas follows with 31,290,831 people, and Florida comes in a distant third with 23,372,215 people.
California’s population grew by 232,570 people between July 2023 and July 2024, according to the Census.
The California Department of Finance, via the PPIC, currently projects that the state’s population will reach 39.7 million in 2030 and 40.9 million by 2040.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: People moving to California from out-of-state hits nation low in 2024