Americans On The Move...

Every year, United Van Lines publishes a study of internal American migration patterns, using the data from their own moving jobs. The map at right is their own cut at analysis for 2007, showing states with the high inbound moves and high outbound moves, by percentage. This is an interesting view, but not the only one.

So I grabbed the raw data (which United Van Lines makes available at the link above) and did a slightly different analysis, based on absolute numbers. Here's the result:

The top five states that people are moving into (by the actual number of people), in order: North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Oregon, South Carolina.

The top five states that people are moving out of (by the actual number of people), in order: Michigan, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio.

These data are biased in a couple of known ways: it excludes all immigration, and it excludes many people who can't afford to move via moving companies (especially younger people). Until the last few years, illegal immigration (which is far larger than legal immigration) was predominantly into the southern border states; that has changed, as many illegal immigrants are now heading to the midwest and the east coast.

Nevertheless, these data show an interesting cut at American migration patterns. If what you really want to see is where Americans go to live when they have a choice (that is, when they can afford it), there's probably no better set of data to look at.

And if you look at these data through a political prism, there's an interesting trend: people are moving out of areas dominated by liberals, and into areas dominated by conservatives (with the single exception of Oregon).