Pandemic did not result in a great migration, figures show
Contrary to popular belief, there has been no great migration in the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic.
New figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau show that the proportion of people who moved over the past year fell to its lowest level in the 73 years that it has been tracked, in contradiction to popular anecdotes that people left cities en masse to escape COVID-19 restrictions or in search of more bucolic lifestyles.
“Millennials living in New York City do not make up the world,” joked Thomas Cooke, a demographic consultant in Connecticut. “My millennial daughter’s friends living in Williamsburg, dozens of them came home. It felt like the world had suddenly moved, but in reality, this is not surprising at all.”
In 2021, more than 27 million people, or 8.4% of U.S. residents, reported having moved in the past year, according to the Current Population
Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
By comparison, 9.3% of U.S. residents moved from 2019 to 2020. Three decades ago, that figure was 17%.
Besides giving rise to shelter-in-place restrictions, the pandemic may have forced people to postpone events such as marriages or having babies that often lead to moves. But the decline is part of a decadeslong migration decline in the U.S., said William Frey, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.
“These numbers show a lot of people didn’t move or moved at a slower rate,” Frey said. “But it’s a longerterm trend.”
The one uptick in mobility patterns last year took place in longer-distance moves, from state to state, compared to moves within a state or county. Those 4.3 million residents who moved to another state may have done so because of the pandemic, Frey said.
Demographic expert Andrew Beveridge used change-of-address data to show that while people moved out of New York, particularly in well-heeled neighborhoods, at the height of the pandemic, those neighborhoods recouped their numbers months later.
“The same thing happened during the financial crisis. Nobody moved. Nobody got married. Nobody had kids,” said Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Other factors contributing to Americans staying put have been an aging population, the ability to telecommute for work and rising home prices and rents that kept some would-be movers in place, demographers said.
Mobility in the U.S. has been on a downward slide since 1985 when 20% of U.S. residents moved. That was an era when Baby Boomers were young adults, beginning careers, getting married and starting families. In comparison, millennials, who today are in the same age range as their baby boomer cohorts were in the mid-1980s, are stuck in place due to high housing costs and underemployment, according to an analysis Frey did last year.