The economic downturn that swept the USA beginning in 2007 is still sending shock waves through one key facet of modern life: Americans’ moving patterns.
Almost five years after the official end of the recession, new data released Thursday by the Census Bureau show the number of Americans who moved between states last year remained sluggish, at just under 455,000. That was down slightly from 2012 and well below pre-recession levels. In 2007, almost 882,000 people moved across state lines.
“Migration both into and across the U.S. is still being weighed down by the recession,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “I thought we were home free with last year’s numbers, but these new migration data show that the ‘return to normal’ will take awhile longer.”
Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, agreed, saying, “There is no evidence in these data that the recession’s grip on U.S. demographic trends is ending.”
The new figures, which capture moves in the year that ended July 1, show 21 states and the District of Columbia gained more residents from other states than they lost, up from 19 in 2012. Three states – Utah, Iowa and Alabama – moved into the black while Georgia and West Virginia flipped from positive to negative.
Georgia, for most of the last decade among the top five gainers through migration, sank last year from No. 8 to No. 37.
What doesn’t change: Texas is the clear winner, gaining an estimated 113,528 new residents from other states last year, according to Frey’s analysis, or one of every four people moving state-to-state. Over the past decade, Texas has gained 1.2 million new residents from other states, while New York has lost more than 1.5 million.
Another winner: North Dakota, a tiny state that gained thousands of new residents last year for the fifth-straight year amid an oil-drilling boom.
States losing the most have seen losses slow. Just before the recession, the bottom five states lost a combined 677,000 people, or 77% of interstate migrants. In 2013, they lost 297,000.
Immigration keeps some states growing despite losing many residents to other states. California lost 49,000 people to other states but gained 123,000 immigrants.
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