By Gay Cororaton, MIAMI REALTORS Chief Economist 

Florida topped all states with the most out-of-state movers in 2023, according to MIAMI’s analysis of the US Census Bureau’s 2023 State-to-State migration data. In 2023,there were 636,933 people who lived in Florida who had resided in another state in the prior year, accounting for 21% of people who lived in a different residence in the prior year.1  

Texas was second with 611,942 out-of-state movers that accounted for 14.4% of people who had lived in a different address in the prior year. California ranked third with 422,075 out-of-state movers that accounted for 10.4% of all movers in the state.  

On top of being a no state income tax state, Florida’s strong job market and opportunities makes Florida attractive for both retirees and job seekers. In August 2024, there were 478,000 job openings in Florida, or 1.3x the number of job seekers, outpacing the national ratio (1.1x) and other states like Texas (1.1x), California (0.6x), New York (1.1x) and Georgia (1.2x).  

New York, Georgia, and New Jersey were top out-of-state movers to Florida in 2023  

Not surprisingly, New York was the number one state of origin of Florida’s out-of-state movers, with 71,138 New Yorkers moving to Florida, or about 11% of out-of-state movers. New York has been the top origin of people moving from other states to Florida in past years.  

Georgia emerged as the second largest origin of out-of-state movers, with 44, 469 movers, up from 4th place in 2022 (New York, California, and New Jersey were top three). California slid down to third place , with 39,052 movers from that state who moved to Florida in 2023.  

Migration slowed in 2023 compared to 2022  as the work-from-home trend stabilizes 

Migration has slowed somewhat in 2023 compared to 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau State-to-State Flows data.  One factor explaining the slowdown is the stabilization of the shift towards and even the dialing down of the work-from-home trend. In 2021, the number of people who worked from home tripled to 27.6 million, or 18% of the 16+ workforce (8.97 million in 2019, 6% of the workforce). In 2023, fewer people worked from home, declining to 22.5 million in 2023, or 14% of the workforce.    

Nationally, in 2023, 40 million people had a different address in 2022 than in 2023 (‘movers’) or 12% of the population, slightly lower than the 41.4 million people who moved in 2022, or 12.6% of the population. Nationally, there were 7.55 million movers who crossed state lines (out-of-state movers), or 18.9% of all movers, also slightly lower than the 8.2 million out-of-state movers in 2022, or 19.9% of movers.  

In Florida, there were 636,933  out-of-state movers in 2023, or 21% of all movers, which is fewer than the 736,969 out-of-state movers in 2022 that accounted for 25% of Florida’s movers.  Total movers accounted for 13.6% of the population in 2023, slightly less than the 13.7% share of movers to total population in 2022. However, in numeric terms, there were slightly more people who changed residences in 2023 in Florida in 2023, at 3.05 million, compared to 3.014 million in 2022.  

Miami-Dade County continues to see sustained migration from other states as of 2024  

Even as migration continues to normalize, Miami-Dade County is still continuing to see a modest increase in out-of-state movers in the first three quarters of 2024 compared to 2019 based on driver license exchanges as a migration indicator, according to Miami Association of REALTORS® (MIAMI) analysis of Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles data.2  

Miami-Dade County’s out-of-state driver license exchanges rose 2% during 2024 Q1-Q3 from the same period one year ago, with 16,474 out-of-state driver license exchanges. Compared to the pre-pandemic level  during the same period in 2019, out-of-state driver license exchanges in Miami-Dade County are up 20%.  

While Miami-Dade County continued to see an increase in out-of-state driver license exchanges, other counties saw a decline in 2024 Q1-Q3 compared to one year ago: Broward County (14,759; -13%), Palm Beach County (17,829; -10%), Martin County (2,010; -9%), and St. Lucie (5,072; -11%). Out-of-state driver license exchanges are still higher than the pre-pandemic level in 2019 Q1-Q3 in Palm Beach (+2%) and St. Lucie (+18%) but are lower in Broward (-3%) and Martin (-7%).  

Download the state-to-state flows  data below. 

The post Florida is Top Destination of Out-of-State Movers in 2023 appeared first on MIAMI REALTORS®.