
Where are milliennials headed, at least in terms of places they are moving to. For the second year running, SmartAsset set about finding out. Here's what it found:
SmartAsset used Census Bureau data to find out where are millennials moving. To track millennials’ mobility, we looked at immigration and emigration data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2017 cities. Check out our data and methodology below to see where we got our data and how we put it together to create our final rankings.
Key Findings
- Old Dominion is popular – Virginia takes three spots in our top 10. In particular the southeastern portion of the state makes appearances in the top 10.
- Big Apple no more – New York took the bottom spot on this list again. In particular residents seem to be leaving the city to venture into other states. In total around 69,200 residents moved to New York from out of state while nearly 95,000 left the Big Apple for another state.

Washington received the largest influx of millennials both in terms of net influx and net influx relative to population. This state received nearly 40,000 more millennials than it lost, which is around 0.55% of the overall population. Seattle was the main beneficiary of these millennials, which we’ll discuss in the section below.
Washington was not the only western state to crack this top 10: Colorado, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona are also in the top 10. Colorado and Oregon in particular were popular landing spots for millennials. Colorado received over 26,500 more millennials than it lost and for Oregon that number was just under 12,000. Nevada and Arizona had slightly less spectacular numbers, receiving 8,800 and 7,000 millennials, respectively.
The South makes up the rest of the states in our top 10. The no. 2 ranking state is Texas, with a net influx of nearly 34,000 millennials, followed by Virginia which gained 18,300 more millennials than it lost. Georgia, North Carolina and Florida round out the top 10. Georgia saw its population of millennials increase by 17,600, North Carolina saw a net influx of just under 10,000 millennials, while Florida received just under 7,200.
