Markerr’s Population and Migration data through September shows that people are continuing to migrate toward Sunbelt markets, dominated by Florida, the Carolinas, and Texas. Coastal markets in California and New York continue to experience negative net migration. However, the trend looks like an acceleration compared to year-over-year from last year.
Several large Coastal metros that reported the greatest net migration decline in 2021 are seeing the mean reverse in terms of migration.
Our data shows that population growth has been more concentrated in small and mid-sized cities. Mid-sized cities in particular, are seeing a deceleration in growth compared to 2021. Small cities are seeing the largest acceleration in population growth.
We looked at the year-over-year change of Total Population last year (including births, deaths, immigration, and migration) for all MSAs across the U.S. and saw that Florida, the Carolinas, Texas, and cities in the Southwest dominated the top 10 markets in terms of year-over-year change. The bottom 10 markets are still heavily weighted toward dense, Coastal cities. Coastal markets lost ~600,000 people and the Sunbelt gained ~710,000 people.
Finally, we looked at month-over-month changes and saw growth in Sunbelt/Tertiary Markets from Coastal markets. The month-over-month percent change numbers are fairly small given the slow-moving nature of population change. We think the nominal change is an interesting way to view the data, which highlights large Sunbelt markets gaining the most population and Coastal markets losing the most population month over month.
To see our analysis of specific MSAs and their population counts, View the Report.
