Census Bureau Reports Mover Rate Reaches Record Low

The
percentage of people who changed residences between 2010 and 2011 ─ 11.6 percent
─ was the lowest recorded rate since the Current Population Survey began
collecting statistics on the movement of people in the United States in 1948,
the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. The rate, which was 20.2 percent in 1985,
declined to a then-record low of 11.9 percent in 2008 before rising to 12.5
percent in 2009. The 2010 rate was not statistically different than the 2009
rate.“Taken together,
these products paint a vivid picture of a nation on the move and tell a more
complete story than any one of them can separately,” said Alison Fields, chief
of the Census Bureau's Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch. “The
record low mover rate was driven by a drop in the likelihood of people moving
from one location to another within the same county. The last time this rate was
so low, the overall mover rate also reached a record
low.”The
most common state-to-state moves in 2010 were:

•         
  California to Texas (68,959
  movers)
•         
  New York to Florida
  (55,011)
•         
  Florida to Georgia
  (49,901)
•         
  California to Arizona
  (47,164)
•         
  New Jersey to Pennsylvania
  (42,456)
•         
  New York to New Jersey
  (41,374)
•         
  California to Washington
  (39,468)
•         
  Texas to California
  (36,582)
•         
  Georgia to Florida (35,615)
•         
  California to Nevada
  (35,472)

Four
years earlier, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the most common move was
Louisiana to Texas (118,552 moves). Among the next largest
moves were New York to Florida (87,576) and California to Arizona (85,497). All in all, 7.9 million
people moved between states during the 2005 to 2006
period.This information comes from Geographical Mobility:
2011 [PDF], a collection of national- and regional-level tables from the
Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. 
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