US Migration Data: Florida Gains Residents As California Sees 1.4% Population Drop

Recent data on migration trends showed that people were moving between states in the U.S. more than ever before, with several individuals relocating to Florida, while a massive chunk was leaving California.

The data revealed that there existed a trend of people leaving highly populated states and moving to the south. California's population decreased by 1.4% from 2020 to 2023, and Florida witnessed an increase of 5%, as per Consumer Affairs.

In 2022, around 8.2 million people moved from one state to another, according to the data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The report analyzed data from 143,506 Consumer Affairs users, who expressed their desire to move between January 2023 and March 2024.

One of the main reasons for people to leave certain states was the higher cost of living. New York and California, which have expensive rents in their big cities, saw the most number of people leaving. People were looking at Southern states like Florida and North Carolina as potential destinations to move.

Interestingly, people already living in these states also want to leave. According to Consumer Affairs, 16,259 people wanted to move to Florida, while 13,000 people wanted to leave the state.

Michael Basch, who founded a venture capital firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also moved to the south after living in California and New York. However, he noted that the choice to move states wasn't just about money.

"I'd say if you're optimizing for kombucha consumed per hour a day, go to LA," he said. "I think if you want to start a family, if you want quality of life, if you want a nice community or if you want to make a difference, those are all things I think we win over those markets."

He added, "If you weren't in Oklahoma, and you want to work at a startup or raise capital, you couldn't do so here so easily, let's say a decade ago — that's changed. Also, if you're on the coast and wanted to build a company, but don't want to move to San Francisco, there weren't a lot of options. That's changed as well."

Oklahoma's net migration is only 534, while Florida's net migration is 3,080.