Top 10: Most millennials are relocating to these cities

According to a recent SmartAsset study, millennials relocated to new locations at high rates last year, with Santa Clara County, California, welcoming a disproportionate share of these young people. According to a recent Smart Asset study, cities in Texas and California account for nearly half of the top 10 places millennials moved to most in 2022.

To find out where millennials were moving to most frequently, researchers at the financial technology company examined 268 cities that were included in the U.S. Census Bureau’s 1-Year American Community Survey for 2022.

Adults between the ages of 25 and 44 are referred to in the study as millennials.

In 2022, one in four millennials, or those in the 25–44 age range, relocated to a new city.

According to Census Bureau estimates, the number of people who moved between states increased from 7.9 million in 2021 to approximately 8.2 million in 2022. A ten-year trend is maintained by the rise in movers and the rise in the proportion of state-to-state movers (18.8% in 2021 to 19.9% in 2022).

The percentage of new millennial residents in a given city’s population was used to determine the SmartAsset rankings.

Silicon Valley’s home counties, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, California, are situated in Santa Clara County and ranked second and fourth in the rankings, respectively.

With 13.3% of the population having moved within the last year, Santa Clara is tied with Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the percentage of new millennial residents is 14.7%.

The SmartAsset study states that the two cities “have much to offer ambitious millennials between the prestigious scholastic and tech opportunities in each city.”

“Across the whole population, the median age in Cambridge is 29.9, compared to 35 in Santa Clara.”

18,862 people, or 12.53% of the total population, are new millennial residents of Sunnyvale. The general population of the city is likewise disproportionately young, with 39.7% of Sunnyvale’s citizens being millennials.

Young people are less drawn to Fontana, Santa Ana, Moreno Valley, Lancaster, and Thousand Oaks than they are to other Californian cities.

With only 6% of the population being millennials, Lancaster led this group in terms of new residents. Additionally, Fontana has the fewest new millennials overall, making up only 5.7% of the population.

Here is where millennials moved to the most in 2022

1. Cambridge, Massachusetts
2. Santa Clara, California
3. Seattle, Washington
4. Sunnyvale, California
5. Denver, Colorado
6. Arlington, Virginia
7. Bellevue, Washington
8. Killeen, Texas
9. Austin, Texas
10. Sandy Springs, Georgia

The abundance of opportunities in these cities is what attracted millennials to relocate, according to Jaclyn DeJohn, Managing Editor for Economic Analysis at Smart Asset.

According to DeJohn, some millennials may have moved to Santa Clara because of its close proximity to Silicon Valley in Northern California, while others may have chosen to move to Massachusetts to enroll in graduate programs at Harvard University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Additionally, cities with the lowest rates of millennial migration were identified by researchers. Santa Ana, Moreno Valley, Thousand Oaks, Lancaster in California, Port St. Lucie, Florida, and Brockton, Massachusetts were a few of those locations.

Overall, the study discovered that in 2022, one in four millennials relocated to a new city.

Nonetheless, according to a recent Redfin survey, almost one in five (or 18%) millennials think they’ll never own a home when it comes to purchasing a property in those new cities.

Among the 5,079 Americans who either moved within the last year, intend to move in 2023, or rent their current residence, affordability was the primary justification given.