Census: Americans on the move again

Americans are on the move again, a telltale sign of a slowly recovering economy.

People are once again heading to Sun Belt states that boomed before the Great Recession but saw a dramatic drop in population inflows during the downturn, according to U.S. Census Bureau numbers released today.

At the same time, states that were losing people before the recession but hung on to them because people stayed put during the uncertain financial times have started to lose them again.

For the fifth straight year, Florida gained people from other states after two years of unprecedented losses during the depth of the recession, said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.

More than 17.3 million Americans moved from one state to another in 2013, up 2.7 percent from the previous year, he said.

“I want to emphasize that it’s still not at prerecession levels,” said Johnson, who analyzed the 2013 American Community Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. But “in 2013 the volume of domestic migration reached its highest level since 2007, when the Great Recession began.”

Last year 105,000 more people moved to Florida than moved out. Although a substantial gain, it’s still well below the 189,000 net influx of out-of-staters in the boom year of 2005.

Nevada suffered three years of migration losses during the economic downturn and the collapse of the housing market. The new data show the second straight year of a net gain of 25,000 new residents.

Net migration to Arizona was at 53,000, more than twice the gains in 2012 but still far below the peak of 132,000 people who arrived in 2005.

A combination of factors keeps people in place during bad times.

“Retirees put off moving because their pension plans took a beating,” Johnson said. “There might have been kids living with their parents who decided they could now move in to their own place.”

The collapse of the housing market meant many people owed more on their mortgages than the homes were worth, forcing them to stay or take a financial beating.

States with a long history of losing residents to the Sun Belt’s more moderate climate and cheaper housing had stemmed the outflow during the recession.

Now that the economy is recovering, people are leaving again. New York had a net loss of 129,000 residents last year, compared with 96,000 in 2011. The rate of New Yorkers moving to Florida is down from about 50,000 a year before the recession to about 25,000 a year now.

It’s not clear if the new pace of exodus will continue in coming years.

A net 20,000 people left Massachusetts for other states in 2013, more than triple the number in 2011 but still lower than the 53,000 the state lost in 2005, Johnson’s analysis shows.

California, which had been losing people to states that offered the same warm climate but cheaper housing and more jobs, was hanging on to more residents during the crash. But even there, the outflow inched up to 96,000 last year, still well below the staggering 268,000 net loss it experienced during the national boom in 2005.

“There were some analysts who said migration to the Sun Belt had ended and that metros in California and the Northeast and Midwest would retain more of their population base for years,” said Robert Lang, director of Brookings Mountain West at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, a partnership with the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

“Some even argued that places such as Phoenix had become overreliant on real estate development and population growth and had not bothered to check that the Valley of the Sun had a diverse economy that included a significant manufacturing base in green technology, aerospace and microchips,” he said. Residents refer to the Phoenix metropolitan area as the Valley of the Sun.

The recent census numbers are confirmation that the migration decline was a blip caused by the recession, Lang said.

Sun Belt states have diversified their economies. Just this month, Tesla Motors of Silicon Valley chose Nevada as the site of a $5 billion advanced car battery factory. Tesla received plenty of incentives, including a property tax holiday for up to 10 years and no sales taxes for 25 years. In turn, Tesla has to spend at least $3.5 billion during the first 10 years and half of the workers it needs to build and work at the plant must be Nevada residents — a move that could well attract more out-of-staters.

Mobility has significant implications for the country because it shifts talent and expertise to areas where the economy is growing and away from where it’s not, Johnson said.

“By freezing the population in place, the recession reduced this labor force mobility,” Johnson said. ““The influence of the recession on U.S. migration trends is finally diminishing.”