The latest Census data shows that Texas remains the top state for net domestic migration as the state's population continues to boom.
Nearly 612,000 people moved to Texas last year, while about 478,000 moved out.
The Census Bureau's state-to-state migration flow data for 2023 shows that California, New York and Florida were the top states sending people to Texas.
"From our research and past other data, we have seen that people who move to Texas tend to be people of younger working age population, who usually tend to more likely have a kid and who came for better pay and more opportunity, job opportunities," Helen You at the Texas Demographic Center told KERA.
An analysis by the Demographic Center of the Census Bureau's state-to-state migration flow data for 2023 shows that California, New York and Florida were the top states sending people to Texas.
Other top "sender" states included Louisiana, Illinois, Washington and Oregon. You said that was calculated by subtracting the number of Texans moving to other states from the number of people from those states moving to Texas.
She noted that domestic migration actually increased after 2020 to 2021.
"During the pandemic year, the scale of migration in the whole country kind of was low, but coming out from the pandemic, the thing we have seen is actually the migration flows have been much higher than before and even higher than some of the pre-pandemic years," You said.
Meanwhile, Texans who moved out of the state primarily relocated to Colorado, Georgia and North Carolina. You said that the "outflow" states tend to change year by year. This year, Indiana was included among the top states that Texans are moving to.
"Indiana has not been on the chart in the past two rounds of data, so sometimes it may just be a higher standard error here and small sample size from one year to the next," You said.
You added that Texas has a consistent annual growth rate of 1.6%.
Pablo Arauz Peña is KERA’s growth and infrastructure reporter. Got a tip? Email Pablo at parauzpena@kera.org. You can follow him on X @pabloaarauz.
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