The east coast state of New Jersey saw its residents move out of the region at a higher rate than any other state in 2023, according to moving company United Van Lines, led by retirees in search of more affordable and temperate climates to spend their end-of-work days.
This was the sixth year in a row that New Jersey led the country in outward migration, as 65 percent of resident moves were outbound, United Van Lines said. About 30 percent of those who left the state cited retiring as the main reason for their departure.
"What we really see still in states like New Jersey and even nearby states like New York is still heavy retirement traffic out of those states," Eily Cummings, vice president of corporate communications at United Van Lines, told Newsweek.
Those leaving the states are migrating to southern states like Florida and the Carolinas, Cummings said.
The departure from states like New Jersey and other densely populated metropolitan areas is a trend that began during the COVID pandemic as Americans looked to move to parts of the country where housing was cheaper and they could find better jobs and for those retiring, they might do so in places where their savings could go further.
Cummings said that people looked for mid-size cities that could offer similar cultural and lifestyle amenities that they could find. Places like Louisville, Kentucky, Indianapolis in Indiana or Chartlotte in North Carolina are proving popular for those outbound migrants.
"They are cities that are still vibrant, have transportation systems, offer culture, the arts, entertainment," Cummings told Newsweek. "You could say all of the things that you could get in a large city, you can get in a mid-sized city. So, we're still seeing a lot of movement to more of those mid-sized cities."
Cummings said overall for New Jersey, the state is still seeing its population, partly due to new births and immigrants coming into the region, citing Census data. As of July 1, 2023, about 9,291,000 people were living in New Jersey compared to 9,261,000 the year previously, according to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Also, the trend for the state may not be as terrible. In the past, the data has shown that outbound rates were in the 70 percentile.
"So it is trending in the right direction and I think that's because we're going to continue to see retirement traffic over the course of the next several years start to slow a little bit, especially as most boomers have already retired," Cummings said.
She added: "Retirement over the course of the last 10 years has steadily increased and it's starting to level out, it's starting to stabilize a little bit. And then it'll just naturally go down a little bit before we start to see Gen-Xers start to retire more."
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Omar Mohammed is a Newsweek reporter based in the Greater Boston area. His focus is reporting on the Economy and ... Read more
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