1 month ago
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One yardstick of California’s popularity as a place to live made a slight improvement last year.
My trusty spreadsheet has collected annual migration data dating back to 2004 from three major moving van providers — Allied, Atlas and United. While having someone else move your stuff by van is usually an option for upper-crust Americans changing home states, this metric is worth following because it tends to parallel California’s competition for residents with other states.
For 2025, the three van companies found that, on average, 44% of their California interstate relocations were arrivals of new residents. And while that’s the fourth-lowest inbound share in the past 22 years, it also marked a rare improvement.
Last year’s outflow was a bump up from 2024, when 41% of California van moves were inbound — the second-lowest rate over these 22 years. California’s inbound share of van moves had decreased in five of the previous six years.
Despite the cooling of the outflow, 2025 was still below the average 47% inbound rate since 2004 and the 52% high of 2014. The all-time low was 41% in 2023.
Looking back
Last year, California van outflow declined across all three companies compared to 2024, marking only the third time in 14 years that these movers experienced such synchronized slips.
Yet each company’s inflows are near record lows.
English (US) ·