Millennials have been moving out of big cities — here’s where they are going

The lure of big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago had seemingly already started to wane in young professionals before Covid-19 hit in 2020, according to recent report.

Using the most recent data available from the Census Bureau’s 2019 1-year American Community Survey, financial planning website SmartAsset, found millennials aged 25 to 39 were already migrating from major cities like New York City and Chicago and moving to states like Texas, Colorado, Washington and Arizona.

According to the report, cities like Denver, Seattle, Phoenix and Austin saw the biggest bump with millennials during 2019.

Since the pandemic in March 2020, those trend have continued, according to data from LinkedIn and U-Haul.

In December, LinkedIn found that cities like Austin, Phoenix, Nashville and Tampa gained the most LinkedIn members (from all age groups) based of a change in the zip codes from April 2020 to October 2020.

While a U-Haul report in January found the most one-way U-Haul’s headed towards states like Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Ohio and Arizona.

Here are the cities where millennials were already moving to in 2019, according to SmartAsset and based on census data.

Denver had the biggest net migration of millennial residents with 10,974 millennials moving to the city from a different state in 2019, resulting in about 33% of Denver’s population being millennials.

Seattle had a net migration of 6,164 millennials from out of state, making them 34% of the city’s population.

Phoenix had a net migration of 5,958 millennials. Twenty-three percent of the city’s population were millennials post-migration.

Austin had a net migration of 5,686 millennials from out of state, making them 31% of the city’s population.

Colorado Springs had a net migration of 5,050 millennials from out of state in 2019. Millennials made up about 24% of the city’s population.

Frisco, which is in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, had a net migration of 3,516 millennials from out of state in 2019, to total about 19% of the city’s population.

Cary, whichi is about 15 minutes west of Raleigh, had a net migration of 3,364 millennials from out of state in 2019. No data was available on the millennial population.

Portland had a net migration of 3,311 millennials from out of state, resulting in them making up about 29% of the city’s population.

Henderson, which is about 25 minutes from downtown Las Vegas, had a net migration of 3,042 millennials from out of state in 2019. Millennials made up about 20% of the city’s population.