These States Just Overtook Texas as USA’s Top Moving Destination
For years, Texas was the undisputed king of American migration — the state everyone fleeing high costs and cold winters pointed their moving trucks toward. That's no longer true. Between July 2024 and July 2025, North Carolina overtook Texas as the nation's top destination for domestic migrants, gaining roughly 84,000 more residents from other states than it lost. Texas followed with +67,000, and South Carolina came close behind at +66,600.
California and New York remain the biggest losers by raw numbers, shedding about 229,000 and 138,000 residents respectively. Those losses aren't new. What's shifting is where those people are actually landing.
The Carolinas Are Punching Above Their Weight
Raw numbers only tell half the story. Adjust for population size, and the leaderboard flips entirely. South Carolina posted the strongest per-capita gain in the country at +12.0 per 1,000 residents, followed by Idaho at +9.9. North Carolina, despite winning the raw numbers race, drops to +7.6 per capita once its larger population is factored in — and Texas, for all its headline-grabbing growth, barely registers on a per-capita basis given its 30-million-plus population.
Texas and Florida are still gaining residents, just at a noticeably slower clip than a few years ago. Meanwhile, the Midwest posted its first positive net domestic migration this decade, with Ohio and Michigan reversing years of population losses.
Where Washington Fits Into the Picture
Washington's own migration story has quietly turned a corner too. The state posted a net gain of about 9,000 residents from other states in this same period — a modest number, but a real jump from the roughly 2,000 gained the year before, and a reversal after three straight years of domestic losses. International migration still did most of the heavy lifting for Washington's overall population growth, adding around 46,000 new residents.
Most people moving to Washington are coming from California, followed by Oregon and Idaho — a pattern that's held steady for years and shows little sign of changing. For anyone in the Wenatchee Valley watching new license plates show up at the grocery store, that trend probably tracks with what you're already noticing. The bigger national story is a South that's diversifying beyond Texas and Florida, even as Washington keeps drawing its own steady trickle of Californians looking for something different.
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