Analysis: Pandemic Pressed Fast Forward on U.S. Migration Trends

In a paywalled article for the Business Journals, Ashley Fahey shares data that reveals trends in domestic migration—namely from more expensive to less expensive metropolitan areas.

Fahey starts with the example of Las Vegas, and a pandemic influx of residents from the Los Angeles area:

Between Dec. 31, 2020, and July 31, 2022, the median home value of Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located, increased 44.6%, from $313,778 to $453,764, according to Zillow Group Inc. (Nasdaq: ZG) data.

Heading into (and during the first year of) the pandemic, Clark County saw the largest number of out-of-state relocations from a single county — Los Angeles County, California — than any other in the U.S., with 6,856 tax filers moving from Los Angeles to Clark counties in 2019 and 2020, according to an analysis of U.S. Census and Internal Revenue Service data by The Business Journals.

The data behind those paragraphs allows for more national analysis that might be worth the price of admission for some readers. While the Las Vegas to Los Angeles leads the list of largest out of state migration patterns in 2019 and 2020, next up are Prince George’s County, Maryland and Washington, D.C., followed by Lake County, Indiana and Cook County, Illinois; Hudson County, New Jersey and New York County, New York; and Maricopa County, Arizona and Los Angeles County.

Fahey’s conclusion after parsing all this data: the trends I migration seen in the early months of the pandemic might not have been new, but the pandemic did press pass forward—the counties and cities on the receiving end of these population shifts might have had more time to prepare if these changes had happened at a more normal pace.