One in Four Gen Z Adults Moved States Last Year

Nearly one in four Gen Z adults changed states in 2024, according to a new LendingTree analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey microdata. About 23.9 percent of American Gen Zers aged eighteen and up — an estimated 10.7 million people out of a generation of 44.6 million — moved to another state or the District of Columbia that year. The oldest members of the generation were just twenty-seven.

No other generation comes close to how Gen Z adults moved states in 2024. Roughly fourteen percent of millennials crossed state lines in the same year — about 10.4 million people, a similar raw number from a far larger generation — while the share falls to just over seven percent for Gen Xers and barely five percent for baby boomers. School explains much of the churn: nearly four in ten of the Gen Z movers, 38.1 percent, attended college in 2024.

"When you're young and you're just getting started, you don't have to worry about moving your kids to a new school or uprooting your entire family. You can just kind of get up and go," Matt Schulz, LendingTree's chief consumer finance analyst, told Realtor.com. In LendingTree's own release, he called it a "uniquely mobile season of life," adding that these moves shape where Gen Z builds its early financial life.

Where they went: the Palmetto State and the capital

South Carolina took the generation's biggest net gain — 60,223 Gen Z adults moved in while 37,380 left, for a net gain of 22,843. Missouri followed with a net gain of 14,063, and Washington, D.C. added 13,905. That capital figure looks modest until you scale it: net interstate migration equaled 12.3 percent of the district's Gen Z adult population, the largest share gain anywhere in the country and more than double any state's. North Dakota (5.4 percent) and Vermont (3.8 percent) ranked next by share.

Texas posted the largest net gain among the most populous states at 10,720, with New York close behind at 8,061. In all, thirty-one states plus the district gained more Gen Z adults than they lost — and the winners were scattered everywhere from the Southeast to the Pacific Northwest, with no single regional thread tying them together.

Where they left: California's exodus

California lost the most Gen Z adults of any state — a net outflow of 58,109. An estimated 186,827 young adults left while 128,718 moved in, the second-highest arrivals total in the nation after Texas. The single biggest state-to-state stream ran from the Golden State to the Lone Star State: 19,287 Gen Zers made the California-to-Texas move, against 13,362 going the other way. New Jersey (down 37,556) and Illinois (down 20,031) were a distant second and third, according to LendingTree's state-by-state tally.

Measured as a share of its young-adult population, Alaska took the hardest hit — migration drained 6.3 percent of its Gen Z adults, the worst percentage loss in the country. Nineteen states in total saw their Gen Z adult populations shrink because of interstate moves.

The one-in-four number deserves a second look

Read the Census Bureau's own headline state-to-state flow numbers and the picture cools considerably: the bureau's narrower tally puts all-age interstate movers near 7.2 million, roughly two percent of the country — a figure that sits oddly next to nearly eleven million Gen Z movers alone. The gap comes down to definitions, from what counts as a move to how the microdata is read. That is why trade coverage from HRD America treats the one-in-four figure as direction rather than precision. Whichever tally you prefer, the direction is consistent: Gen Z moves far more than any other generation.

What it means for your first job hunt

The 2024 map of where Gen Z adults moved states doubles as a cheat sheet for anyone starting a career. The states absorbing young adults — South Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona and Washington — are where early-career demand is concentrating, while the capital's outsized share shows how government-adjacent and policy work keeps pulling the young toward D.C. If you are weighing where to launch, the net-flow map tells you where your competition is landing.

For employers, the lesson is blunter: the talent pool is moving, and recruitment that assumes it stays put is hiring for yesterday's map. And most of these movers are not done — with college and first jobs as the twin engines, this is a generation renting trucks in both directions, which means next year's map could look different again. See our Career Path coverage for more on where young workers are headed.