Arizonans were on the move last year
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Arizonans were among the country's most mobile people last year, as the United States saw fewer moves than ever.
The big picture: Roughly 1 in 9 people (11%) changed residences nationally last year — a record low in data going back to 1948.
- That's down from around 14% a decade ago and 20% in the 1960s, per an analysis of recent census data by rental listing site Point2Homes.
- Those figures include people who moved within a state and between states. About 19% of movers in 2024 traded states, and over 71% relocated to a different city, per Point2Homes.
Zoom in: Nearly 971,000 Arizonans, 12.9% of the state's population, changed addresses in 2024, a higher percentage than all but six other states, per the data.
- And the 234,926 new residents Arizona attracted from other states was the 17th most in the country.
Zoom out: New Jersey (8%) and New York (9%) had the lowest shares of movers in 2024, while residents moved most in Alaska, Oklahoma and Colorado each around 14%.
- Wyoming (36%) and New Hampshire (35%) recorded the highest shares of new residents from other states, compared to about 24% for Arizona.
Why it matters: A sharp nationwide "decline in geographic mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century," The Atlantic's Yoni Appelbaum wrote earlier this year.
- In any decade, "the people who have moved have done better economically than the people who stayed behind," Appelbaum said on a podcast in August, discussing his book "Stuck."
- "The last 50 years, as we've stopped moving, have also seen [a] sudden atrophy and decay of our social and civic life."
Context: Appelbaum cites "discriminatory zoning laws" and "community gatekeeping" as major reasons mobility has stalled.