For more than a decade, the story of American migration had a predictable plot. Texas and Florida absorbed the movers, California and New York lost them, and everyone else filled in around the edges. That narrative just broke wide open. United Van Lines has released its 49th Annual National Movers Study, and the numbers reveal a country quietly rewriting where it wants to live.
The New Number One Came Out of Nowhere
Oregon claimed the top spot for inbound moves in 2025, with 65 percent of all moves involving the state heading in rather than out. That is a striking jump from the year before, when Oregon ranked eighth. The Beaver State’s rise is being driven largely by job seekers chasing opportunities in tech and healthcare, and Eugene-Springfield alone posted an inbound rate of 85 percent, the highest of any metro area in the country.
Rounding out the top of the inbound list: West Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, Minnesota, Idaho, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, and Nevada. It is a lineup that mixes a few predictable names with several that rarely make headlines for population growth.
The Detail That Complicates the Whole Story
Here is where the data gets genuinely strange. West Virginia ranks among the nation’s top inbound states by share of movers, yet Census estimates show the state actually lost population between July 2024 and July 2025. The explanation lies in the difference between the two measurements. United Van Lines tracks what percentage of total moves into and out of a state go in each direction, while Census figures track the state’s overall population change, accounting for births, deaths, and every kind of move, not just the ones captured by a moving company’s customer base. A small state with few total moves can post a lofty inbound percentage while still shrinking overall, simply because more people are dying or leaving quietly than the relatively small number moving in can offset.
Four other states lost population outright over the same period: California, down roughly 9,000 residents, along with Hawaii, Vermont, and New Mexico.
The Two States That Ruled Migration for a Decade Just Hit a Wall
Perhaps the most jarring finding in this year’s study involves the two states that have defined American migration since the pandemic began. Texas and Florida, long considered the undisputed kings of inbound relocation, are now classified as “balanced” by United Van Lines, meaning roughly equal numbers of people are moving in and out. It is the first time either state has carried that designation in recent memory, and it marks a real shift after years of being treated as migration inevitabilities.
That said, other data sources tell a slightly different piece of the story. The U-Haul Growth Index and the PODS Moving Trends Report, which track one-way rental and container volume rather than moving company percentages, both still list Texas and Florida among the top destinations for overall mover volume in 2025, alongside North Carolina and Tennessee. The takeaway is not that people have stopped moving to Texas and Florida. It is that the ratio of people leaving those states has caught up to the ratio moving in, even as raw numbers remain high.
Where Everyone Is Still Trying to Leave
New Jersey held its familiar and unwanted title for the eighth consecutive year, posting a 62 percent outbound rate, the highest in the nation. Illinois continues its long-running decline as well, with more than 56,000 residents departing in the most recent year alone. California, New York, and Massachusetts round out the states losing the most residents to outbound migration, with retirement, job changes, and family reasons cited most often by people leaving.
Why People Are Actually Moving
The reasons behind these moves have shifted in an important way. For the second year running, the top motivation for relocating was proximity to family, cited by 29 percent of movers, edging out job changes and company transfers at 26 percent, a reason that dominated for decades. Retirement came in third at 14 percent.
Researchers tie part of this shift to the normalization of remote work. Roughly a quarter of all paid U.S. workdays are now performed from home, a figure that has held steady for several years, giving remote-capable workers far more freedom to choose a location based on who they want to be near rather than where a job requires them to live.
The Bigger Shift Nobody Is Talking About Enough
Beyond the individual state rankings, the study points to a broader change in how Americans are relocating. Movers are increasingly bypassing large metro areas entirely in favor of smaller cities and towns, trading big-city density for more manageable communities. More than half of movers surveyed chose suburban areas over urban ones, and a growing share of relocation searches now target metro areas entirely different from where the searcher currently lives, rather than a neighboring suburb of the same city.
What This Means for Anyone Weighing a Move
For those tracking where the country is actually headed rather than where it used to head, this year’s numbers offer a clear signal. The safe assumptions of the last decade, that Texas and Florida absorb everyone leaving California and New York, no longer hold up cleanly. Oregon, the Carolinas, and a handful of smaller states are quietly becoming the new migration story, while the reasons driving the move matter now more than ever, with family taking priority over the paycheck for the first time in years.
This article draws on data from United Van Lines’ 49th Annual National Movers Study, U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, the U-Haul Growth Index, and the PODS Moving Trends Report.
Amanda O’Brien is the creator and editor of The Boutique Adventurer. She has visited 80 countries and is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers as well as the IFTWTA. She is passionate about wine had has just completed Level 3 of the WSET. Born in Australia, she lives in London.