U-Haul State Net Migration Rankings Have Clear Trends
Every year, U-Haul releases net migration rankings by calculating how many one-way rentals enter a state and subtracting how many leave it. There was a sample size of over two million moves last year. Here are their state rankings for 2020, with the 2019 ranking in parentheses:
1. Tennessee (12)
2. Texas (2)
3. Florida (1)
4. Ohio (7)
5. Arizona (20)
6. Colorado (42)
7. Missouri (13)
8. Nevada (24)
9. North Carolina (3)
10. Georgia (16)
11. Arkansas (23)
12. Indiana (9)
13. Wisconsin (41)
14. Oklahoma (14)
15. South Carolina (4)
16. West Virginia (22)
17. Utah (8)
18. Kentucky (37)
19. Montana (26)
20. Minnesota (15)
21. Kansas (18)
22. Alabama (6)
23. New Hampshire (31)
24. Iowa (30)
25. South Dakota (28)
26. Vermont (10)
27. Delaware (21)
28. Virginia (39)
29. Maine (33)
30. Idaho (11)
31. Mississippi (25)
32. Nebraska (19)
33. Wyoming (27)
34. Alaska (17)
35. Rhode Island (35)
36. Washington (5)
37. North Dakota (32)
38. Washington, D.C. (38)*
39. New Mexico (36)
40. Michigan (48)
41. Pennsylvania (46)
42. New York (43)
43. Connecticut (34)
44. Louisiana (40)
45. Oregon (29)
46. Maryland (45)
47. Massachusetts (47)
48. New Jersey (44)
49. Illinois (50)
50. California (49)
Note that Washington DC is listed here but Hawaii, which you cannot drive to or from, is not.
While there are some outliers, you can see pretty clear trends that movers consider high state taxes and more lockdown restrictions to be bad, and low taxes and less lockdown restrictions to be bad. Tennessee, Texas, and Florida all have no state income tax. California state income tax reaches as high as 12.3 percent for high earners. Illinois' is 4.95 percent, but there is a 6.25 percent sales tax (which climbs up to over 11 percent in Chicago). New Jersey's state income tax is 10.75 percent. As you can see by last year's numbers, some of these trends were already in place before the pandemic.
According to U-Haul the biggest growth regions in Tennessee include Clarksville, Cleveland, Cookeville, Knoxville, Maryville, Murfreesboro, Nashville, and the tri-cities (Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol).
Other than taxes and pandemic restrictions, what trends do you notice here?